Connecticut’s

Unsung Heroes
By Nancy Hughes, Mystic Seaport Educator
To learn how Mystic Seaport’s educational programs meet the
Common Core standards and the CT Social Studies Frameworks,
please see https://www.mysticseaport.org/learn/k-12-programs/common-core/
For more information on navigation, or to book a tour, please visit our website:
http://www.mysticseaport.org/learn/k-12-programs/field-trip/

T
he study of Connecticut State history is anything but dull, but Mystic Seaport has put a new twist on how
What do the to approach it and make it more interesting for students and teachers alike. Join a Museum Teacher for
a guided, one-hour, 45-minute tour on the theme of “Connecticut’s Unsung Heroes” and learn things
Goodyear Blimp, about Connecticut you never knew. We start with the broad premise that our little state (third smallest in the
Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers, nation behind Rhode Island and Delaware) has been and continues to be mighty in its accomplishments and
has produced far more than its share of revolutionary ideas and inventions. We ask: “Why?” We explore the
and a Mounds Bar, impact of geography, and how different parts of the state attracted different industries and incubated different
ideas. We see how one good idea leads to another, how competition is a kind of teaching, and how, over time,
have in common? innovation can arise, flourish and fade, to be repurposed or replaced. We explore how people – as individuals
or as a group – working together for a common purpose, can grow and change a town – or a state. We do this
in a most personal way, town by town. In fact, we start with your town, and move on from there.
Did you know that there are 169 towns in Connecticut? The Mystic Seaport team of educators have put on our research hats and come up with fascinating
information on each and every town. When you register for a tour, you tell us what town (or towns) you’re from, and we will personalize your tour accordingly. In
addition to learning about the history, resources, and people of your town, each tour takes advantage of the Mystic Seaport campus to make connections with our
shared New England past. We will visit a 19th-century home, have a hands-on experience with a 19th-century trade, and have a map exploration activity.
By way of example, let us investigate a couple of Connecticut towns, what we can learn and which connections we can make. Now, back to the original question:
What do the Goodyear Blimp, Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers, and a Mounds Bar, have in common?

Charles Goodyear Peter Halajian Adrian Adolph Greeenburg

Charles Goodyear was born in 1800 in New Haven. He
grew up in Naugatuck and in 1833 made a fateful decision:
he would find a way to stabilize rubber. At that time little
was known about chemistry and how atoms worked, and
rubber, while useful, was not well-behaved. In warm weather
it melted, and it cracked in the cold. After being shown a
pile of foul-smelling, gummy rubber life vests that no one
would ever want to buy, Charles Goodyear began systematic
experiments, mixing rubber with a variety of chemicals. His
experiments ate up his savings – at one point he had to sell
his children’s books. Finally, in 1839, he mixed rubber and
sulfur over high heat and invented the stabilizing process he
named “vulcanization”, after the Roman god of fire, Vulcan.
In 1843, Goodyear engaged the Samuel J. Lewis Co. in
Naugatuck to make vulcanized rubber overshoes and, in
1844, patented his process. Soon numerous rubber companies
in Naugatuck produced rubber boots, rubber gloves and
rubber sheeting under his license. From the Keds sneakers
once made in Naugatuck, to the Goodyear Tire and Rubber
Co. in Akron, Ohio, supporting the automotive industry, to the
Goodyear Blimp seen at sporting events, Charles Goodyear
gave Naugatuck its reputation as “Rubber City”.
In 1890, a Naugatuck rubber factory hired an Armenian
immigrant, Peter Halajian. A diligent worker, he usually
met his daily quota by mid-afternoon. During those
afternoon hours, he built up a small business selling
fruit and candy door-to-door, often with his two young
daughters. He gained a reputation for high quality sweets
and by 1895, opened a candy and ice cream store near
the rubber factories. By 1912, he had three shops and
had changed his Armenian surname to a more American-
sounding one – Paul. His candy business grew by leaps
and bounds as his-brother-in-law, then four friends joined
the business, and in 1921 the Peter Paul Manufacturing
Company began making their most famous product, the
Mounds Bar with its coconut filling. This was a story of
product innovation, by the 1930s, about 20 percent of
all coconuts imported into the United States made their
way into Naugatuck, and about 100,000 candy bars
were shipped out daily. During World War II, the success
continued, as the company supplied the U.S. military with
about 5 million candy bars a month, and then donated
the used coconut shells to chemical plants to make
charcoal for use in explosives and gas masks.
Adrian Adolph Greeenburg was born in Naugatuck
in 1903 to a family that owned a millinery shop.
He grew up around the trappings that made hats
beautiful: ribbons, lace, fine fabrics, and trims like
silk roses. Perhaps these hats caught the fancy of the
workers who flocked to Naugatuck to work in the
rubber industry, many of them new immigrants from
Poland, who wanted a hat for “Sunday Best.” At the
age of 19, Greenburg went to Paris to study fashion,
where he met the famous musical theatre composer
Irving Berlin. Soon, he was designing costumes for a
show on Broadway, and later moved to Hollywood. In
1939, as chief designer for MGM, he worked on The
Wizard of Oz, which was made in Technicolor, known
for its high color saturation. Overseeing the hundreds
of fanciful and colorful costumes created for the
movie, he decided to change Dorothy’s slippers from
silver to ruby… and the rest is history. Whether or not
he thought of himself as an innovator, Greenburg had
the spirit of one.

And, you guessed it. What connects the Goodyear Blimp, the Mounds Bar, and the ruby slippers is the town of Naugatuck.
That, and three Connecticut men demonstrating the best of Yankee ingenuity – imagination and perseverance.

During a “Connecticut Unsung Heroes” tour,

most student groups will have a geography
lesson. Students will be given a map of
Connecticut showing all 169 towns and
asked to locate their town or towns. When
you are looking at the map, which direction
is North? Which states border Connecticut?
What lies to the South? Then, using a
second map showing Connecticut’s rivers in
detail, students will again locate their town
and explore how its location, geography,
and natural resources, especially its access
to water for navigation and for power,
fostered industry and nurtured a spirit of
Map of Connecticut Rivers innovation in its population. Map of Connecticut towns
Photo credit:www.mapsoftheworld.com Photo credit: Google

Water
If there is one word that ties together most everything in Connecticut, it is water. If we view the state of Connecticut as a more or less tidy rectangle, we
see that every inch of its southernmost border is coastline. Here, Connecticut meets Long Island Sound, and at its most southeastern corner, Fisher’s Island
Sound. These two bodies of water protect the land from direct contact with the Atlantic Ocean, and create a unique coastline of harbors, bays, and marshes
that have deeply affected Connecticut’s history.
If we travel along Connecticut’s coastline by boat, we discover the mouths or drainage basins of more than 25 rivers, all running north to south and all
carrying their fresh water to mix with the salt water of the Atlantic. The network of their tributaries, with lakes, ponds, and streams, as well as man-made
dams and canals, has shaped life in almost every Connecticut town. Water is for drinking, cooking, irrigating, fishing, transportation, and, when harnessed,
for power.
Where a town is located and what its natural resources are, often factor greatly into what industries prosper there and what kind of people it attracts. Let’s
go back to our first sample town, Naugatuck. We find it at a wide bend in the Naugatuck River. Did the rubber factories have machines that relied on water
power? How did coconuts get to Naugatuck? Do you think immigrant families might seek work here?
More Fun Facts
These stories about Naugatuck show how the Museum’s program works with each group. We personalize each tour based on the town or towns you choose, On The Next Page
highlighting local figures (famous and not-so famous) and making connections between your chosen location, the rest of Connecticut, and the world.
 Connecticut’s Unsung Heroes
To learn how Mystic Seaport’s educational programs meet the Common Core standards and the CT Social Studies Frameworks,
please see https://www.mysticseaport.org/learn/k-12-programs/common-core/
Let us take another example: East Haddam. This town, on the Connecticut River, is blessed
with good land, bucolic scenery, and a wide, navigable river. Settled in the late 1600s, one of
its attractions was the Moodus River, a tributary of the Connecticut River, which was dammed
to supply power to cotton-spinning mills. Eventually there were twelve such mills, specializing
in twine used for nets, sail making, covering for electrical cables, and yo-yo strings.
Haddam became home to many different people, carrying many kinds of innovative spirit.
An early one was Venture Smith. As a young boy, he was captured in West Africa and bought
for four gallons of rum and a piece of calico by a crewman aboard the slave ship transporting
him to Newport, R.I., in 1739. Young Broteer, renamed Venture, soon found himself working
for the Mumford family on a large farm on Fisher’s Island. By the early 1750s, Venture had
married Meg, another slave on the farm. Venture tried and failed to run away, and soon after
being recaptured he was sold, with Meg, to a farmer in Stonington, CT. Venture and Meg
worked hard to buy their freedom from their new owner, but it was not to be. He was sold to
a Stonington merchant, Oliver Smith, who let him earn his freedom by hiring himself out to
do hard work such as cutting cordwood. Once Venture bought his freedom, he honored Smith
by taking his name. He continued to work hard at a number of jobs, and in 1775, purchased
a small piece of land in Haddam Neck rich in timber, which he cut and sold. By timbering,
farming, fishing, and trading, he was able to buy the freedom of his wife Meg and their three
children and increase his land to 100 acres. In 1798, he did the most remarkable thing of all:
he wrote down the story of his life and it was published in New London, CT. This remains one
of the few first-person accounts of the experiences of a slave.
In 1829, Emory Johnson started working at a local mill in East Haddam where raw cotton
was turned into high quality twine. Emory was a man of unusual ability and, in 1838, he
married the owner’s daughter and soon had a stake in the business. It grew during the Civil
War, and by 1867, he ran two mills under the name of “Neptune Twine and Cord Mills”.
Eventually, about 30 employees carded, spun, twisted, wound, and baled the cotton/twine,
and the little town around his mills became known as Johnsonville. As the market for cotton
twine declined in the early 20th century, the twine mills went out of business. In the 1960s,
Johnsonville was sold and made into a Victorian-themed tourist attraction. Sadly, it was not a
success, and remained a “ghost town” for many years. Of the twelve original mills along the
Moodus River, only one remains.
Moodus twine was used to make fishing nets, and in the 1870s, Wilbur J. Squire built a
factory in East Haddam to manufacture nets using his patented invention, which he called
DID YOU KNOW? (Fun
(Fun Facts,
Facts, Cool
Danbury, CT, is nicknamed “Hat City” for the millions of fur felt hats it produced
from the 1780s to the 1980s, but here is a hat story you might not know:
Hats Off to Connecticut
(and a tip-of-the-hat to Massachusetts, too)
Thompson is located in the very northeastern corner of Connecticut. Not far away to
the northeast, lies the town of Foxborough, MA. In 1798, the first straw hat made
in America was fashioned here, by young Betsy Metcalf, just twelve years old. It
happened this way: Betsy was window-shopping in Providence, R.I., and admired an
imported straw bonnet. Unable to afford such a luxury, she returned home with an
idea. She cut some rye grass from her father’s field, used her thumbnail to split the
straw, and braided the split lengths. She fashioned the braided straw into a hat of
her liking and proudly wore it to school. The hat was greatly admired, and first her
classmates, and then others in town took to harvesting and braiding straw into hats.
During a “Connecticut Unsung Heroes” tour, all students will have a
hands-on experience in one of the 19th-century trades represented at Mystic
Seaport. This might be a visit to our cooperage, shipsmith shop, shipyard,
carve shop, sail loft, fisheries exhibit, or ropewalk. For students, visiting from
East Haddam, a tour of our historic ropewalk and a turn at making a length
of rope with the portable ropejack would be a perfect tie-in (oops, couldn’t
resist) with a town that once produced twine and gill nets.
Plymouth Cordage Company (Ropewalk) at Student making rope at
Mystic Seaport Mystic Seaport
Photo credit: Mystic Seaport Photo credit: Mystic Seaport
One of the most important aspects of every town is its industry. The industry, driven by
geography, an unmet need or simply by an innovative idea by one of its citizens, which
leads to the employment of others, defines the town and attracts other industries to it.
Without a chance of employment, new people do not come, and others must move away.
Towns change over time, as we saw in East Haddam. Once the “Twine Capital of the World”,
East Haddam is now a center for culture and tourism.
The Plymouth Cordage Company Ropewalk, originally built in 1825 in Plymouth, MA, made
cordage, or rope for the maritime industry. Called a ropewalk because workers walk through
the long building to make or “lay” strands of rope. A ropewalk must be long in order to
produce a long length of rope. Rope can be made of any fiber, usually from a plant. The
fibers are first soaked or “retted”, then beaten or “swingled” to elongate them, then twisted.
Historically, marine cordage was produced from the stalk fibers of the hemp plant or the
manila plant. To make rope, the workers spun the fibers into yarns using a spinning wheel
and wound the yarn onto big bobbins or spools. Bobbins were mounted on a rack called a
creel and their yarn fed through the holes of a forming top (like a giant sieve). The yarns
were then bundled together and attached to a forming machine. While moving backwards
along a track, the forming machine pulled and twisted the yarns together to form a strand.
The strength of rope comes from its twisting, and the gauge or diameter of the rope comes
from the number of yarns twisted into a strand. Most rope has only three strands, which
are then twisted in a counter direction by the foreturn machine to form rope. Because of
the length lost in twisting twice, yarns of 1,000 feet became rope 600 feet, or 100 fathoms,
long.
Using our portable ropejack, students will make their own rope. We will start with yarns
made of sisal, twist these into three strands, and counter-twist the strands into a length of
rope. Students will supply the “manpower” by turning the ropejack and/or carefully tending
the guiding “forming top” or tension-controlling “loper”. We will talk about the advantages
and disadvantages of various fibers, and see first-hand how much yarn length is lost in the
process. The rope produced becomes your classroom souvenir.
Interested in a more extensive
experience for your students?
Ask about our Apprenticeship or
Overnight Programs!
By Nancy Hughes, Mystic Seaport Educator
Continued
the Yankee Gill Net Machine. Gill nets are a mesh made of twine knotted into precisely-sized
holes, just big enough to let a fish swim partway through. When the fish tries to swim back
out, the net will catch behind its gill flaps. To tie by hand all those knots, uniformly tight
and made to the right mesh size, was slow and tedious work. Wilbur Squire’s invention, with
machines that could tie 3,000 knots a minute, changed the industry. East Haddam became
the world capital for manufacturing gill nets and remained so for almost a century.
The decline of twine milling and net making in East Haddam marked the end of one chapter
in the history of East Haddam, but these industries were succeeded by others centered on
recreation. The town’s beautiful setting on the Connecticut River and proximity to the coast
made it popular with tourists, who, as early as 1880, could travel by sail or steam to enjoy
performances at the Maplewood Music Seminary or the Goodspeed Opera House, each served
by its own steamboat landing and hotel. The Goodspeed, built in the elaborate Second-
Empire style, opened in 1877 and prospered through the 1920s, before falling into disrepair
from which it was rescued by local citizens in 1959. Since 1963, it has become an incubator
for quality theatrical productions, many of which have gone on to Broadway.
Theatre has its innovators as well, and one of them was William Gillette, who so liked East
Haddam that he built a castle there. Born in Hartford in 1853, he grew up in exciting times,
in a city and family rich in progressive ideas. His father, a U.S. senator, was an abolitionist and
a great believer in public education. Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain were neighbors.
Imagine the conversations around the dinner table at the family home! Gillette became an
actor, playwright, and director, and in 1899 took on his most famous role as Sherlock Holmes
in a play of that name, based on the detective novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Gillette
is credited with introducing three props that embodied the character: a curved briar pipe,
a deerstalker cap, and a long traveling cloak. These innovations, together with Gillette’s
adoption of a more “natural” style of acting, were very popular. On advertising posters and in
Doyle’s subsequent books, Gillette became the face and figure of Holmes. Between 1899 and
1933, he played the detective about 1,300 times. Do you think he ever became tired of the
role and do you think he knew his lines?
Lured to the beauty and theatre-friendly community of East Haddam, Gillette built a fanciful,
24-room castle where he entertained and played tricks on famous visitors such as Albert
Einstein. Built entirely from Connecticut stone, Gillette Castle is a state park and attracts
visitors from all over the world.
Cool Vocabulary,
Vocabulary, and
and Chart
Chart Challenges)
Challenges)
The hats were well received, even in far-away markets like Boston, and soon there was
enough demand to build the Union Straw Works, which became the largest straw hat
factory in the world.
Most of the straw braiding and weaving was done by women, and it was a Connecticut
woman who invented a technique for weaving straw with silk and thread which made
the braids more durable and made a better hat. In May of 1809, Mary Dixon Kies of
Killingly, CT, became the first woman in America to receive a patent from the U.S.
Patent Office. How did Mary get her idea? Killingly is located just one town south
of Thompson, so perhaps Mary or her Irish immigrant parents owned a hat made in
Foxborough, MA. Mary put her Yankee ingenuity to work to make straw hats stronger
and cheaper. Mary’s patent was signed by President James Madison, and Dolly
Madison was so delighted to hear that a woman had earned a patent that she wrote
Mary a letter to congratulate her.
During a “Connecticut Unsung Heroes” tour, all students will have a chance
to tour an historic 19th-home to compare how different – and the same
– life was then. Although students from East Haddam will not find any of
the Museum’s three homes as grand as Gillette Castle, there is much to be
gleaned from close observation of the artifacts and activities represented in
each. Take the Buckingham-House, for example.
Buckingham-Hall House Loom in Buckingham-Hall House at
Photo credit: Mystic Seaport Mystic Seaport
Photo credit: Mystic Seaport
In 1768, young Samuel Buckingham, a veteran of the French and Indian War, and his
new bride Lydia began their married life on a farm at the mouth of the Connecticut River,
in what is now Old Saybrook. They built a house, started a family, purchased additional
adjacent land, and soon had five children and a prosperous farm on 40 acres. A peek into
the parlor shows us they were solidly middle-class: we see fine furniture, a bowl from the
China trade, and a tall clock. The clock has wooden clockworks inside and was made by Eli
Terry of Plymouth, CT. (In 1814, Terry patented a 30-hour shelf clock with interchangeable
parts.) In the kitchen, where open-hearth cooking demonstrations take place, we see
Connecticut-made items such as hand-forged iron tools, cast iron pots, pottery bowls,
and wooden spoons. Even if the cook is not preparing fishcakes on the day of your visit,
the dried, salted codfish hanging on the wall is a reminder of the importance of fishing
industry to the overall economy of our state. The cordwood used for cooking and heating
comes from Connecticut trees. How much wood do you think Venture Smith had to cut as
he bought his freedom and then his land, and then freed his family? Upstairs, students
will enter the weaving area. Here is the perfect place to mention one of Connecticut’s most
important industries, the milling of textiles.
The Willimantic section of Windham, CT, is nicknamed “Thread City”. Located along the
Willimantic River, renowned for its swiftly moving water and drop in elevation, its many
mills once produced cotton cloth and the first colored cotton thread wrapped on wooden
spools. Manchester, CT, is nicknamed “Silk City” because it once housed the world’s largest
silk mill. The rise of the Cheney Brothers, from growing mulberry bushes for silkworms,
to inventing the Rixford Roller to improve the winding of silk into thread, to creating a
finished product, including producing silk parachutes during World War II, to building a
neighborhood for workers that has been designated a National Historic District – well, that’s
a story.
We live in a most remarkable state, with a remarkable past, innovative people, and a
promising, ever-changing future. Every town in Connecticut has a story to tell. Come visit us,
Connections
and we will tell you a story of your town.
Literature, Art & Science
WORD PLAY: Where Did That Expression Come From?
Remember the ropewalk? As the forming machine moved backwards along its
track, men walked alongside to guide it along and make certain that the yarns
twisted properly. It was a long walk, and as they moved slowly along, they
would tell stories. Have you ever heard the expression “spinning a yarn”?