Small but Mighty: The people's Collection

Ashley, Kym, and Matt are joined by Jennifer Matos, the Administrator at the Museum of Connecticut History at the Connecticut State Library. We learn about the history and mission of the museum, get highlights about various collections and artifacts, and finally learn the (true?) story of the Charter Oak. There was a heist! Oh and the Nutmeg, the seed that gave our beloved state one of its nicknames, may be based on a lie. Dun dun dun.

What we’re reading

• The Thing of Ours by Frederick Joseph
• Low-Risk Activities by J Efron
• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
• A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean

State resources we mentioned:

• The Museum of Connecticut History
• The Palace Project App
• CT Explored

Credit:

“Wholesome”

Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/be/3.0/

The Connecticut State Library. Preserving the Past to Inform the Future!

Transcript

Kym (00:06)
Welcome to Under the Charter Oak, a podcast of the Connecticut State Library where we preserve the past to inform the future. My name is Kym Powe I am the children and young adult consultant.

Ashley (00:16)
I'm Ashley Sklar, I'm the Adult Services and Community Engagement Consultant.

Matt (00:20)
I'm Matt Geeza, the director of the Middletown Library Service Center and the Connecticut Library for Accessible Book

Kym (00:27)
And our guest joining us is...

Jennifer (00:30)
Jennifer Matos, the administrator of the Museum at Connecticut History, which is a division of the Connecticut State Library.

Kym (00:37)
I'm just realizing, Jenn, that you and Matt have kind of long titles and I feel like I should add more words to mine doesn't feel long enough - rude! Thank you so much for joining us the first thing that we always do when we're kicking off our podcast because we're a bunch of library book nerds is say what we are reading. So I'm gonna start I am reading or I just finished reading relatively recently finished reading This Thing of Ours by Frederick Joseph I think it is his first young adult novel. I really can't remember what that feels accurate to me. And it is about a boy, I believe going into his senior year, a black boy at a private school who was the star basketball player and this, that, and the other thing. And he has an injury and can no longer play basketball. And that was supposed to be his ticket to college. 

And through the assistance of a teacher in the school realizes that he actually has an amazing talent for writing. So good, in fact, that that could be his new avenue. He's a little lost because his entire identity was basketball. And so when he gets into this writing program, it's great for him and he begins to meet other people that he never met kind of in that sports bubble. But the problem is there are people who don't want him in the writing program, the prestigious writing program. There are people who don't want to read the things that they are being asked to read in the writing program and to evaluate things the way they're being asked to evaluate it. So it's an amazing book. Highly recommend 10 out of 10. 

Who wants to go next?

Ashley (02:11)
I'll go. I am reading a book in print. I just picked it up. I will say I know this author. He is someone who I've known since I was maybe nine. He's my brother's best friend, but just published a book and I got it in print, which is also, I can't remember the last time I read a print book that wasn't a picture book. So this is called Low-Risk Activities by Jesse Efron.

And it's kind of, I'm unclear of the genre yet. I'm only one whole chapter in, but in this first chapter is centered around this gender fluid, possibly immortal being. And the scene is that this person has just published a memoir, and so it's an author talk. And so there's an audience, and there's an interviewer, and they're talking about the sort of arc of this being's life, which it's really unclear because they're very careful. They're very secretive and they're very careful not to like set it in time. So, but there's trauma in their past. There's desire. There's this sort of question of what does it mean to exist across the identity, different kinds of identities. It's got kind of like very futurist vibes, but also present vibes. And so I think it's, I think it's going to be a series of short stories.

I am sort of unsure of where it's gonna go, but I love this person. I've known him my whole life. He's near and dear. He lives in Japan. He's lived there for 10 years. So this is sort of like a treat to get kind of a peek into his mind. And I know it's been a long time coming, so. Fun. Yeah.

Matt (03:51)
Jenn, do you want to go next?

Jennifer (03:53)
Sure, well I wanted to give a shout out to the Palace app that I know CSL is responsible for doing. I probably, don't know, like a lot of people, I feel like my time to read normally is right before I go to bed and I'm really unsuccessful that way. like four pages and then I reread it the next night.

Ashley (04:16)
of the thing on your chest.

Jennifer (04:18)
Yes, I fall asleep many times with a book on my chest. But it is my time where I read a real physical book. I really enjoy that at night. But what I've been doing to make myself feel better about my reading, I've been listening to books when I commute. So I've been using Palace heavily. I finished two books recently. So I read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, which I didn't, I always thought it was just like kind of like a Jane Austen Emma sort of thing where like the title was the heroine and it was set in some kind of grand estate, but it's not that at all. It's such a surprise. And Alfred Hitchcock made a movie out of it that I haven't watched yet, but now I'm kind of really interested in Daphne de Maurier in general. Like I want to read, because she also wrote The Birds. other Hitchcock. Yeah, right. So I'm really, I just thought it was really great, really surprising. Like if you want to read a surprising book, probably most people have read it because it's a classic, but.

Kym (05:16)
you

Ashley (05:17)
I'm not one of those people.

Jennifer (05:19)
was really good, and it was like a page turner. And before that I had, just to give you like the breadth and depth of Palace, because they have everything. Before that I read Charles Dickens, and I read David Copperfield, which was excellent. Now I want to say it was 36 hours, so it was a time commitment. But the cool thing about...know, audiobooks is that they have really engaging narrators who did like, it was so great to read it with a British accent. It was great. I loved it. I thought it was fantastic. It was really heartwarming. now I'm read more Charles Dickens and I'm going to look on the app to do that. But the one I'm reading right now is The Cliffs by J Courtney Sullivan. And this was recommended by a friend. is

Ashley (05:50)
You're kidding!

I would!

Jennifer (06:10)
like contemporary literature and I don't normally as you can already see by the two books I've mentioned I usually read more historical stuff but this is a really interesting book it's on Reese's book club and it's about an archivist the main character is an archivist and it's about a Victorian house in Maine and this archivist's connection to the house and what it, I'm still kind of figuring it out, although I think I'm pretty close to the end, I, it's still not clear exactly what's happening. But they are, different chapters are about different people who are connected to this historic house. It's a Victorian, as I mentioned, and they're uncovering these kind of hidden stories, and there's some ghostly activity happening as well, so it's a little bit of a mystery, kind of how are all these people connected, and is there really a ghost or is there not? It's really entertaining.

Kym (07:06)
Also, just you need said The Birds. For my...I'm in a book club at my local library and we recently read the Parliament which I thought of like I don't know Parliament. Yeah. No that is what like a flock of Yeah, they're called they're called the Parliament and in the book it said that up because they've got people held up in a library a public library

Jennifer (07:21)
that's cool.

Ashley (07:32)
Leaf, is it

Kym (07:33)
Owls?

I think it's owls. And so there's like all these owls and someone tried to leave and like a very unfortunate situation similar to The Birds happened to like three people. And they're just stuck in there and there's like this group of teens, cause there was like a teen craft that day. It's absolutely insane. But when you were talking about, you know, Alfred Hitchcock, it's called the Parliament...it's, there's some owl. It's a journey. We had a long talk at book club about it.

Jennifer (08:02)
Sounds interesting.

Ashley (08:06)
To you.

Matt (08:07)
So I just finished rereading of A river Runs Through It by Norman Maclean.

Kym (08:13)
No way, no you didn't.

Matt (08:16)
Yeah, so I've read it before.

Like Jenn was saying, I listened to this one in audio format. So it was really interesting to see how the experience changed and actually found that I appreciated the book even more listening to it than I. It's one of my favorite.

Ashley (08:32)
Did listen to it or did you just read it?

Matt (08:36)
So I just listened to it my last time through. So this is a book I've read before. I've read it primarily in print, and I've probably read it two or three times before. Every so often I'll go back to it. It's one of my favorite books. But we were out in Montana in the summer, and so in some of the areas where the book is set, if you're not familiar with it, it's a work of fiction, but it's largely based on
Norman Macleans's family and his experience growing up. It's set in the 1920s and 30s. Most of the action is in the 30s. a lot of people associate it with fly fishing because that is part of the book. Fishing factors heavily in it, but really it's a story about family and how families relate with each other and how sometimes you can't help somebody even though you want to. So anyway, I appreciated it just as much on the audio version. And if you haven't read it, definitely a very, very well written book.

Kym (09:40)
Didn't they make us all read that in high school? that just me? No? Well, OK, by I say read I'm like high school for me was the height of Cliff's notes. So like, who knows? like.

Ashley (09:43)
I didn't read it in high school.

Jennifer (09:45)
I've never read it.

Matt (09:53)
It may have been. I don't know of it being on many high school curriculums, but who knows.

Ashley (09:59)
Well, I. To it earlier this year, Matt's recommendation, I don't and I think it was around. I was listening to it around the time that you took your trip to Montana, and I forget why we had it had come up somehow in conversation and you suggested it. Maybe I don't know. We were driving somewhere, I think. But and I was like, I should listen to that because you were saying it's the same narrator as, of course, I'm sure many folks are familiar with the movie A river runs through it, which I loved and. 

Kym (10:00)
The 90s were wild.

Ashley (10:27)
But the voice of the narrator is really striking and so listening to the... Yeah, isn't it the same?

Jennifer (10:31)
He narrated the book too.

Matt (10:34)
don't know if at least the version I read or listened to, don't know if it was, so it was Robert Redford who narrated the voiceover narration in at least the But they, all of that voiceover is lifted directly from.

Ashley (10:48)
from the text. that may be a confusing voice with text. But it is a beautiful book to listen to. So yeah.

Jennifer (10:57)
Can we talk too about audio books versus print books?

Kym (11:02)
wrote down, keep, they keep being separated and I'm wondering why. Like I am, they don't like normally, like if I say that I just read some, like I said I read this thing of ours, I may have audio'd it. I don't think I actually read it at all. So nine times out of 10, like I don't actually differentiate. If I'm reading it, I'm reading it, whether I'm reading it with my ears, my eyes, my hand. So it's just like, it's an interesting thing that people do kind of like separating the two.

Jennifer (11:29)
It feels like we're cheating in some way because I'm listening to it. But in reality, I'm still absorbing it the same way. I'm just not taking in with my eyes.

Kym (11:32)
But in...And the thing is you're taking it in with a lot of other different senses, right? So especially if it's like a full cast kind of situation. And what I always say is there's certain books that I'm always going to listen to on audiobook regardless. And that's typically if I suspect or if I see that there are gonna be words in other languages in the books. So we read the Henna Artist for my book club also, which takes place, I believe, in India, I can't remember. And like, all you have to do is open the book to see that there, you know, are, and to hear someone reading and saying those words, as opposed to whatever my mind would come up with, is like, it really changes the game. And I think it really can change the way that the work is absorbed and understood. 

And also like, the temperament that someone says something with, right? It's like, we millennials, if you don't add emojis into text messages, is someone mad at you, right? So I think like, it can completely change the perspective of the book if you're hearing it in a different way than it was intended to be said. And that's not bad, right? Like reading, we're all allowed to interpret our work in different ways. with Matt, I think there is a difference, there can be a difference if you've listened and read something, right? Just sort of the changes. But just when we're talking about books, I don't really say if I've audiod it unless I maybe want to say something about the audio. But yeah, I don't know. I literally just wrote that down. Like, why does that keep happening? Hmm. 

Ashley (13:09)
I think I have to take probably some blame for that because I think I do differentiate and I think that You know, I'm I don't know. I I mean, I totally agree reading is reading and I but I think for myself I'm I don't know. It's the way I'm like identifying what I'm reading on what platform and It is if it is it for me a different experience to do one like I was like holding a print book for the first time and ages felt really different to me than listening to something so I do my personal experience.

Jennifer (13:40)
I do sometimes read them in tandem too where, yeah, I will have the audio and a lot of times I'm a very I'm definitely a very visual person. So when I hear things and it's beautiful and I agree with you, like to hear the way something is actually supposed to be pronounced or the cadence in which it's written. I really appreciate that. But sometimes I'm rewinding to be like, wait, what was that? What were they talking about? And then every now and then I'll just because you on palace, you can get things also.

Kym (13:43)
immersive.

Jennifer (14:10)
So I'll just pop it open and be like, what did they say? And then I'll read it myself.

Kym (14:16)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, the immersive aspect. But yeah, I read so many books, I think, with like accents and things like that or like specific dialect, depending on sort of where you're from or what type of environment you're in. It completely changes the story when you're reading something about someone who's maybe like culturally different from you, even if they are in the same country. And so the way that like conversations are had are different. That happened in I just finished a book Into the Smoke and they live on the Blackfeet Reservation and they would say something like innit. And if I had read that and be like, what are they do? Like, I'm lost. But to hear the way that they were saying it, I'm like, this is just like, know, if we were, I'm trying to think of some, like some, filler word which I can't right now, but, and I would not have picked up on that if I was reading and I just would have kept seeing this word like.

What? 

Matt (15:16)
Is used sort of like to confirm something?

Kym (15:18)
Yeah, yeah, right or just or I mean this and I think it's also the way that it was used could be different depending on the context, right? So I know there's a lot of that in like AAVE right like African American Vernacular English where sometimes it's the same word but it might mean something different depending on the context in which you're saying it in and I don't know if that's part of the reason why I like audiobooks on top of the fact that like once upon a time I had a one-hour commute and I needed sanity. 

But yeah, no, don't think it's bad or wrong. And I think I said this in one of our, there are people who are like, the spine, the smell, right? And once upon a time, I was that person. I was personally offended by the existence of eBooks. Like I remember when Nook announced, and I mean, you would have thought that someone had just like, personally insulted me to my face, like the existence of like digital books. And now I'm going for a digital book every time. I will read a print book, but I'm going for digital every time. But yeah, I don't differentiate.

Ashley (16:24)
Chime in, Matt, chime in.

Matt (16:26)
Well, as we were talking about earlier, reading is reading. It's certainly from the perspective of the Library for Accessible Books, we deal with a variety of formats, including braille and audio. So people request the materials in the format that they want to read in. We consider it's reading, all the same. Yeah, so I think maybe sometimes here we just differentiate it just to talk about it's kind of like talking about the edition, you know, you're in an academic kind of context. So is it this edition, the second edition, third edition? And, you know, so maybe it's just kind of we're noting, you know, the format a little bit. But yeah, I think we're all seem to be in agreement that it's reading all the same. Yeah, yeah.

Kym (17:11)
It's our books. And I love them all. But I prefer an eBook. I don't know why. Can't help it. Can't help it. It's the, it's the carpal tunnel, man. That's the thing. Like you don't even have to go. I'm the ripe old age of not quite 40. And between the crochet and the holding books, weird and public libraries. I'm so sorry, especially because there's not like a book in the world under 350 pages now. Rude. Can't be out here holding that book, turning those pages.

Ashley (17:44)
I'm grateful for the options.

Kym (17:47)
absolutely.

Matt (17:48)
Yeah, options are always good.

Kym (17:52)
Why not more? Why not both? Why not all of it? Yeah. What a lovely conversation. I'm so happy. Man, that was great. Especially because it just happened. There was a lot of reading. There was a lot of talking. But you know, this isn't about this. This episode isn't about us, Matt and Ashley. This is about Jennifer. Our lovely.

Ashley (17:55)
Yes, and.

Kym (18:15)
Yes, I'm so excited to have you. So a couple of episodes ago, Matt, Ashley and I began to talk about how we came not only to the State Library, but into libraries, period. And you are in a museum. so I don't know what in a journey, a museum and a library. Sure. Sometimes I forget how the State Library building works. I don't actually really understand. Is it in the State Library? Is it next to it? I don't know. But would you mind just sort of giving us

Ashley (18:32)
February.

Kym (18:44)
a brief or deep or detailed history of sort of what led you to, were you led to libraries first, were you led to museums first? Are you like me? Should you actually be on stage or recording books in a podcast studio? Just sort of like, what's the journey? I'm here for it.

Jennifer (19:01)
Well, thanks for asking. So yeah, the Museum of Connecticut history is really unusual, I think, in the fact that it is inside a library. So you don't need to go any further than 231 Capital Ave in Hartford. The State Library building includes the Museum of Connecticut history in its center, which is great. So, my journey was not specifically library oriented, although I did during college work at the West Hartford Public Library in the teen rooms.

So I did have a stint in a public library, which was really cool, really interesting, like very different. I also worked in at the, it was called the Connecticut Historical Society then during college. I worked in their research library, and so that was a very different feeling from working in kind of like an academic, really historical resources versus working in a public library. So it's great to have different experiences so you can kind of understand the differences and the nuances.

I was an art history major to begin with. I'm so excited to hear that.

Ashley (20:02)
Me too, me too.

Kym (20:04)
I'll see myself out. Go have fun having that conversation.

Jennifer (20:08)
And I had been thinking about doing studio art in high school and I just felt like, I don't know, it seemed like an iffy kind of adventure.

Ashley (20:16)
No guarantees there.

Jennifer (20:19)
doing art history as an undergrad and while I was there, I started working at the historic, the research library and that got me really interested in history. So I was still early enough in my college career that I was able to double major. So I ended up getting a degree in history and art history and then thinking about graduate school because if you wanna work, I wanted to work in the museum and it's pretty much like you have to go to graduate school. So I just kind of went right in, right out of undergrad. And I studied American studies, or specifically my program was American Civilization. So, because I was thinking, you know, as much as I might like European art, there's, like we're in America. so, you know, thinking about working at a historic site, which is actually exactly what I ended up doing. 

So when I graduated, it's a little hard to break into the museum field, I think. There's just not a lot of job openings. So I ended up going back to Connecticut Historical Society, working in their education department. And from there, I moved over to Noah Webster House in West Hartford. He's the author of the dictionary. So I was there as director of education.

Kym (21:27)
I never put that together. Oh my god, oh my god.

Jennifer (21:31)
Yes.

Kym (21:34)
Oh, the stars have aligned. I've had an adult and children dictionary. Oh my goodness. Is this those things? Do you guys learn that in like the fourth grade in this state? Did I miss it because I wasn't here?

Ashley (21:37)
That's like all clicking into place.

I don't, I have to, when Jenn was at the Noah Webster house is when Jenn and I first met. I, but I.

Kym (21:54)
Tell you that the dictionary? my gosh.

Ashley (21:57)
It's a great question. think I knew before that. I do think I knew before that.

Kym (22:01)
A Jeopardy answer. I didn't.

Jennifer (22:03)
Yeah, he was born in West Hartford. So this is his childhood home. He later lives in, he's involved with Yale. So he lives in New Haven. So his adulthood home was actually moved if they were gonna tear it down and then Henry Ford bought it and they moved it to Michigan. So we, I don't work there anymore. The state of Connecticut, we...

We have the only Noah Webster house that is in its proper place. How about that? there we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kym (22:34)
my goodness. That was a tangent. I, man.

Jennifer (22:39)
Amazing, know. And he was really, like, he loved Connecticut too. So he really, like, infiltrated his definitions with things that were really, like, things he observed and he saw in Connecticut. And he really felt strongly like Connecticut was doing it better than it.

Ashley (22:53)
Yeah

Matt (22:56)
Can you give an example? I'm just curious.

Jennifer (22:59)
I think, well, he wrote a lot of other things besides the dictionary. So one of the things he wrote was Sketches of American Policy, which was before the Constitution was written or ratified. He kind of put in what he thought should be in the Constitution. And a lot of it was based on Connecticut's founding documents, which I think we're going to talk a little bit more later, but the fundamental orders and the charter of 1662. So he was really...the level of democracy that we had here in Connecticut he thought was like a gold standard that he wanted the whole nation to follow.

Kym (23:36)
I love that as a non-native nutmegger, which I didn't even learn that that was the thing until my mid-20s. I was like, what are you talking about? I was trying to say like, Connecticutians, I was trying to find a way to say it and someone goes, we're called the Nutmeggers. And I was like, the what?

Ashley (23:52)
Connect the...

Jennifer (24:03)
The nutmeg state.

Kym (24:03)
I didn't now that either. No, the book awards. Yes. Yeah, I knew the no, the Children's Book Awards are called the Nutmegs So I was like, are you kidding? And I was really irritated about it. I was like, that doesn't even sound like Connecticut. You know, like Californians, Florida.

Ashley (24:10)
Yes.

Jennifer (24:17)
Yeah. Yeah, you have a really good point. And that's been kind of like a bone of contention for historians because there has been a movement to get away from nutmeggers because nutmeggers has a really derogatory. Yeah, no, they are fake. Yeah, that's what the that's why we're known as nutmeggers is because of like the peddlers and the peddlers and they would, you know, they would whittle them out of wood. Yeah. And then by the time, you know, wait, they.

Kym (24:31)
And the nutmegs are fake! Right! Whittled them out of wood?

Ashley (24:47)
Yeah, they were woods!

Matt (24:48)
So you want some nutmeg and it would just be.

Ashley (24:50)
It would just be a chunk of wood.

Jennifer (24:52)
but then by the time they went to grate it, know, and find out it wasn't real, they'd be out of town. So it's really not a compliment to be called a nutmegger. So there's been actually a push, like the Connecticut Explored, the magazine of Connecticut history, they have been pushing for a Connecticutcan. A Connecticutcan.

Ashley (25:08)
A Connecticutcan.

But I've heard Connecticutian, right? Like that has. Connecticutcan is a little it rolls off the tongue, maybe a little bit better.

Jennifer (25:16)
I like it, it has a nice ring to it. It's really blunt. Yeah. But I think it's the positive.

Kym (25:26)
has to say where are you from,

Ashley (25:28)
I can see a logo now, right?

Jennifer (25:30)
Anyway, okay.

Kym (25:31)
Sorry! Where are we? Noah Webster, Noah Webster. The dictionary. I got real lost.

Jennifer (25:36)
yeah, so okay, so after there I worked at the old state house, Connecticut's old state house, which is the only like oldest state house in Connecticut. There was once two state houses, there were once two, there was one in Hartford and one in New Haven before the current state capitol was built. Current state capitol being across the street from the state library if you need a kind of landmark to recognize.

And yeah, I worked there doing educational programs. And then I went back to the Noah Webster House to be the director, the executive director. And I was there for eight years before coming to the State Library at the Museum of Connecticut History. And I kind of was I was interested in The Museum of Connecticut History, it's not super visible and we're working on kind of increasing its visibility. And it took me a really long time to realize it existed while I was working in the museum field. But I was really intrigued by it and its collection and its situation inside the State Library. And so when I saw the job opportunity come up, I was really excited. And I have to say, it's been...really awesome working at the Museum of Connecticut History, being associated with the State Library in such a venerable institution, being in that building, it has this like great book smell when you walk.

Ashley (26:56)
gonna sue it.

Jennifer (26:57)
It's like an old book smell. We have like seven floors of stacks and the building itself is just gorgeous and the collection at the museum, which I'm gonna tell you more about, is really awesome as well. And I think another really cool thing about working in a museum that's inside a State Library is that because the State Library is so complex and has so many different departments, I get to work with you guys, right, who are on the front lines of public library stuff. But we also have our reference team, so everybody who's kind of really helping other people find stuff, which means we have access to them too, right? Like, I need a letter from so-and-so to so-and-so, like help me find it. And they know exactly where everything is. We have our public records, and then we also have the Connecticut State Archives. So a lot of the stuff that the museum has on display is actually items from the State Archives. So it allows us to really expand the stories we can tell because of that kind of depth of resources. It's wonderful.

Kym (28:00)
Cool network. That's that's awesome. And yeah, we were able to there's a couple of us here at the service center, which is based in Middletown. We're recently able to go and hang out in the museum because there was an event that was happening there that we were all speaking at. And you guys have done a lot of really great work there. So how long have you been at the with the state library? Because it didn't look like that when I started. started in 2019.

Jennifer (28:27)
Yeah, so I took over as the administrator in January of 2023. So it's going to be three years.

Kym (28:34)
Yeah, so I mean, so much has changed. And you mentioned that at the time, like there was a period, even when you were working in museums, that you just weren't really you just weren't really familiar with the Museum of Connecticut history. And I think that's probably a story that a version of that that we all have to offer. And when I do a lot of outreach events, there are people who are like the what what. So like before we dive into some specifics, like super high level, what do you do there? What is in there? And I guess like, what is the mission? What's the why? Who's it for?

Jennifer (29:09)
Yeah, absolutely. Great question. So first of all, if you think about the State Library being built, so there is the building is called the Connecticut State Library and Supreme Court building, and it was built in 1910. So prior to that time, the State Library was actually located within the state Capitol, but they were doing all the same functions. And as the state was growing, they were getting more and more records and more and more books, and they needed a new place to go. So they ended up the State Library. at the time was George Goddard, and he had visited the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, also known as the White City. And so he was really inspired by the architecture there and so he came back with a vision of the building that there is today which is a very beautiful Beaux Arts building. I think it's a little challenging actually for a museum or a library to have, it's a little imposing looking because it's very grand and it's got this staircase going up to it. But once you get inside, you'll find that the people are very friendly. So one side of the building was designed to be the state library, the other side housed and continues to house the Supreme Court. And in the middle, they decided to build a museum. And so they just kind of like plunked this big room called Memorial Hall in there. And so if you can think about the records, the books, the paper coming over from the state capitol over to this building to make up the state library and the state archives, the new museum space absorbed the state's art.

So we took in all of the portraits of Connecticut state governors. So we have 73 portraits that are on display in that room. They also brought in other collections. So during this period, because they were kind of like building a museum in 1910, they took on a lot of different things. And we'll talk a little bit more about some of the specific collections. But that is how it started. And then it grew over time.

Eventually it becomes renamed. I don't even think it had a name originally. It would have just been the museum at the State Library probably. It became officially known as the Raymond E. Baldwin Museum of History and Heritage in 1987 by state statute. And traditionally we've had collections come in in different ways, a lot of donations, some acquisitions, but basically over time, the collection has kind of taken the form of three major areas, which is military, political, and industrial history. So we use this collection to chronicle the growth of the state and its role in shaping the nation from the colonial era to the present. And our collection helps tell the stories of the people, places, and events that define Connecticut's past and present. And we think a lot about lived experiences, right? So a lot of what we're trying to do is get beyond the thing and the object to move on to the story that goes with it, which usually involves a person, right? And so we try to help people connect with the past through the things that we're able to display. And that means through the stories that we're able to tell.

Kym (32:27)
love that, it's like a people first mentality is kind of what it feels like, right? So yes, here is this object, let's tell you about the person and what they did with it and how they used it and how they integrated it into context. right. And so I, as I think I've said, I mean I've lived in Connecticut for so long I might as well claim it and now that I know that Noah Webster, the dictionary guy, man, and we're changing that weird name.

Ashley (32:51)
Be proud.

Kym (32:54)
So, Team CT. But when I talk about Connecticut all the time, I say, yeah, was like the OG America, right? Like one of the original Americas. So there's just , I imagine, stuff here. There's just so much that exists within the state. So much history, so much to tell, even though, as we all know, when we're looking at sort of the world and the planet as a whole, that America is like a teenager, right? And like maybe even a young teenager. Maybe they can't even drive yet. You know, I don't know. But I'm probably right though. So I imagine that there's a lot here and there's a lot to tell and so you said that we're kind of breaking it down into military, political, and industrial sort of within this space are there things that you're really trying to highlight, like really trying to share in this small but mighty state.

Jennifer (33:51)
Yeah, well, I'm glad you said small but mighty because that's the name of one of our exhibits. So you had mentioned that the museum looks different than maybe the last few years. So we were able to make some improvements, small improvements, but basically try to modernize some of the exhibits and kind of bring things into best practice, including monitoring light, temperature and humidity, or how long certain objects are put on display. So there are things that are more sensitive like paper or textiles. So we've gone around and kind of cleaned up a lot just to try to make sure we're taking care of everything that's been left in our care. So one of the things we did is we did renovate an exhibit that was called Connecticut Collections and we actually changed it to Small But Mighty Connecticut. We changed it because Connecticut really is small but mighty. mean, it is such a, it's the second smallest state, think. Third. Third, okay.

Kym (34:47)
Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut. Delaware, oh no, this is the one fact about this state that I know.

Ashley (34:49)
That's one of my favorite.

Jennifer (34:55)
That's wonderful. Yeah, so we really, we have kind of played an outsized role in the nation's history, I think as a state. So it's been really fun to discover so many of the cool things we have in our collection. And I think when you're, when you have something that an institution that's been collecting since 1910, perhaps with different standards of collecting then than there are now. There was maybe less discernment in what was taken in. So it's kind of interesting. It's part of a process. One of the things we're going to be working on, we've started slowly, is doing an inventory of the collection. So we have about 44,000 objects in the collection. And what we need to do is to do an item by item inventory, which you can imagine is gonna take her really.

Ashley (35:45)
It's project.

Jennifer (35:47)
It is, but it's gonna be really great to do that. We've been inventorying in the meantime sub collections basically. So being able to have a really good understanding of what we have, what kind of condition it's in, where it's at. These are all really important things. And we're working on this in tandem. We've been working on moving our collections management system. So all museums use some kind of database to help them inventory and keep track of all the things that they have in the collection.

We've been using Past Perfect in the past, but we have moved to a new system called Connecticut Collections, which is a statewide collections management system that's cloud-based, which is really cool. It's something that's run by the Connecticut League of Museums. And so there are over 50 museums who are using this for their collections inventory and management database. So we're in the process of moving over to that. So it's all gonna kind of work together as we're moving records over, we can then do the physical inventory, find the thing, be able to update the records, and then kind of move on from there. So once we have a good sense of everything that we have, we can make some decisions about is everything we have things we want to keep? Is there anything that doesn't belong here? What do we want to collect moving forward? And that's something that's kind of interesting for a history museum because I feel like a lot of times a history museum focuses on the past, but in order to keep your relevant, you need to continue collecting present history and that gets lost a lot of times. But we've been doing small bits to try to make sure that we're collecting contemporary history right now. 

So yeah, it's been a really, we have so much potential and so much growth that's going to be happening over the next years. But thank you very much for noticing some of the physical changes. It's been really fun. It's a labor of love. have a very small team in the museum. We only have four employees. So we are a lot of times.

Ashley (37:44)
We are so happy!

Jennifer (37:47)
Yes, we are. So we just usually have, you know, as we all do in the field, right, like a million projects going on at once, but all stuff that we're super excited about.

Kym (37:57)
Yes, you're just making me think of my tiny team of three youth servicing on behalf of 190 towns. But so you mentioned that you guys are doing an inventory. And when I think about inventory, I kind of think about in a library like ours, when we go through and we weed and we kind of pull data and stats and things like that. And sometimes we find like really interesting things that we didn't know, right? As far as like maybe the popularity of something or the age and continued popularity of something. Are you finding cool things? Like I can imagine a history museum, again right, like OG America. How much stuff? 44,000 items. So are there any cool things that you've found that we can know about?

Jennifer (38:41)
Yeah, one of the things we found recently, actually we've found a lot of really cool stuff in all sorts of different areas. And a lot of it is just kind of happenstance as we've been working on kind of decluttering and cleaning off carts filled with stuff. So a lot of times there are just boxes that you have to kind of go through and figure out what's what. So one of the things our curator found over the last year was this little tiny box with a pocket watch inside and the box was lined with newspaper and the newspaper was very old and after some research she actually figured out that this was a silver pocket watch owned by a guy named Colonel Elisha Bostwick. He was from New Milford, Connecticut and this pocket watch actually crossed the Delaware with Washington on Christmas Day in 1776.

Kym (39:34)
Hey George, hey Christmas, hey Hallmark Channel.

Ashley (39:41)
Yes!

Kym (39:41)
Honestly, I can see the movie that this, I found it. Okay, we can talk about that later. But that's super cool. can you just, like, I'm not a museum person. Like I've had the Connecticut passport art trails, know, so I've gone to some. Ashley also has a museum history background. Matt has a history background. He's the one who mentioned the fake nutmegs to me that I did not know about, but I don't think I knew that they were just whittling them out of wood.

Is there like an abridged way that you can help us understand how would you find out something like that, right? So you find this pocket watch, it's in the newspaper. I imagine like open the newspaper and look at the year and, or maybe this is just something that you guys do because it's what you're trained to do the same way. Sometimes it's hard for me to explain how I use like Boolean searches to find things to celebrate. And I'm like, I don't know, man, I've just been doing it for so long. You type this, this, this, and you hit that button and then quotes and so I'm just wondering is there, or maybe it's being able to access archives and public records. Like does some of that come into play as you guys are finding out the history of these items that are valuable to our state?

Jennifer (40:52)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think sometimes objects will have a note, right? But you don't know that the note was accurate because a lot of times it's actually a historical note, right? That like whoever, Elisha Bostwick's probably like great, great, great grand something, know? Tony did this with like this cross the Delaware and then you have like. Yeah.

Kym (41:11)
They told me like did he though

Jennifer (41:15)
Right, so we definitely had to do due diligence and you know, you usually would start with the name and because we have access to The State Library the reference services we have a history and genealogy department We have a lot of information at our fingertips and actually anyone would have this information because so much of it is available online So we were able to authenticate Elisha Bostwick. He actually wrote a memoir And he was there. I mean he was part of the Connecticut Militia. He wrote an eyewitness account of the crossing. And one of the other things that I did, and I should say that this is an object that we're now, because we know it exists, we've authenticated the story and we've actually had the object conserved. So it's looking really nice. That is going to be something that we put on exhibit for part of our commemoration of the 250th anniversary.

But one of the other things I wanted to know more about was, OK, so we all know, like, Washington Crossed the Delaware. Like, what's the deal with that, right? And automatically, as an art historian, I think of the painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware that's at the Met.

Kym (42:24)
I was at the Met. I didn't go in, I stood on the stairs. I was there for something totally different, but we met on the Met and I was like, the gala, the dresses, the themes. And so like I began to put it all together. So this has nothing to do the story, but I was there on the stairs.

Jennifer (42:41)
Well, the Met is great, right? It's only like less than two hours from here. So it's great. You should go to the Met and you can go see this painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze who is a German-American. And this was a painting that was actually made in 1851. And my daughter had actually studied this in just like seventh grade history class because they were studying, you know, something, a painting that's made after the fact, you know, it's made for a reason. And like, what's the symbology? Like, did it actually get the story?

Like if you look at the painting, they've got like horses are on the rafts with the people and it's icy. Like there are these like chunks of like iceberg in the water and it makes it, I do think it was a dramatic event. was, they had really harsh conditions and you know, some of the soldiers might not have even had shoes, right? This was at the part where they had like really, really been suffering. And I think the that comes across with the painting is the fact that Washington made this really bold move. Like they were failing epically and he was like, you know what, we're gonna take them by surprise. We're gonna cross at night and then they were able to be successful and take over Trenton, New Jersey. So I think what's really interesting is that this little tiny object can tell the story of this major historical event.I mean, and when you think about like if these walls could talk, like if this pocket watch could talk. It is actually maybe one of very few physical connections to that event. It was there. That's so cool.

Kym (44:20)
is awesome.

Jennifer (44:22)
And we're really lucky too. We actually have a flag from the American Revolution. It's...It was recently on display. It was on loan for about a year to the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. And they did an exhibit. And from the exhibit, I learned that it was like one of only 31 flags left from that period. so, yeah, again, that one had a Connecticut storyline relating to the second light dragoons. And we use the flag to look for more stories. Right. So I don't know, you know, if you're not really interested in the light dragoons, which is basically any...

Kym (45:00)
Yeah, I don't know what that is. I'm over here nodding absolutely. Dragoons.

Jennifer (45:04)
They're a mounted military force. So the dragoons were on horseback, but I think the light dragoons means that they were trained for both like foot.

Kym (45:16)
Mm.

Jennifer (45:18)
as well as horseback combat. So they were pretty elite force that were actually from Connecticut. But so how do we research that? I think for me it be like, who was a member of these light dragoons And we found through some pension records through a lot of the databases that we have at the State Library that one of the members of the Second Light Dragoons was a man named Joseph Robbins. And we know this because his wife had, after he died, she was trying to get his pension. And so she states all these different battles he saw. The really cool thing we that we found was that he is actually a Native American and from Connecticut, possibly Nipmuc and is like the elite of the elite and according to his wife's testimony.

He was part of the second Light Dragoons was called over to Yorktown to actually be a personal guard to George Washington. And Joseph Robbins was present when Lord Cornwallis surrendered. So he is seeing history. He is right there in the midst of it. ⁓And so it's really cool that you're able to take an object and there are so many different directions you can go with it. And then as a curator, you have to make that decision. What story are you going to tell? Because you can't tell all of them. Or I guess you can do them at different times. And that's something we're kind of thinking about with the 250th anniversary, which is the semi-quincentennial, is thinking about how does the semi-quincentennial compare to the bicentennial? And if you think about it, all of the objects we have are the same, right? Or all of a sudden found, maybe we found the pocket watch. But mainly, if you think about American history, everything that's been here is the same as 1976. And it's really how we are viewing it from a 21st century perspective has changed. So what are the stories we wanna tell? And I think for the Museum of Connecticut History, we wanna be able to tell.

Kym (47:00)
Shoulders up!

Jennifer (47:20)
more accurate history in terms of like who was actually here and how did the Revolution affect the people who were living here. And that's not just like the famous hero people like Israel Putnam and Nathan Hale And we do have a bunch of their stuff in our collection, but like who are the regular people? Who are the Joseph Robbins who are just like living in Connecticut and are like, I'm gonna sign up, let's go.

Kym (47:45)
Geez, the knowledge that I am learning right now. I had one fact. I had one fact about this is the third smallest state and the rest of them, I'm like, what do you mean? So you've been at the Museum of Connecticut History for a while. And as I said, you guys are doing so much work. think it's easier for us to notice because we're not there all the time. It's like when you don't see like your niece and then you're like, what do you mean? You're my height.

But so as you guys are sort of doing this inventory, as you're preparing for the 250, which I'm really excited to hear more about, are there, and you're talking so much about, right, we talk about Joe Connecticut here all the time, so sort of like Joe Connecticut of the past, right, wanting to tell those stories. Are there collections or exhibits that you're hoping to build as you are doing this inventory and as you're really trying to dive into the story of like average human Connecticut past?

Jennifer (48:40)
Yeah, well, I think a really good example of that will be our new exhibit. So if you don't mind, I'll tell you a little bit about that. So we have been working for about a year and a half on an exhibit to commemorate the 250th anniversary. And it's going to be an exhibit called Connecticut's Revolution. So we're in the implementation stages now with the plan of opening this exhibit July 4th, 2026. It's going to open for a year. And this is really an opportunity for us to showcase the State Library's collection and that includes not only the Museum of Connecticut History, but also the Connecticut State Archives collection. So the exhibit's actually gonna be centered around the Declaration of Independence that the state has. So we have a really rare broadside called the Goddard Broadside. And it's been on display in the museum for quite a few years now with very little fanfare. When you...

Kym (49:33)
I don't think I saw that when we were in the museum.

Jennifer (49:36)
Well, was there, probably just didn't know to kind of flag your attention to it, right? Unless you knew what you were looking for. And as we do more research on this document, we're understanding more about its rarity and thinking about how we can present the expected in an unexpected way. So we know that this exhibit has to be, like it has to have the Declaration of Independence. It's like a must have, but how can we tell something new about it, right? And you, you know, I think probably traditionally people have talked about Connecticut's four signers. So at, know, every state had a delegation that went to the Continental Congress and Connecticut had four, four of them, Roger Sherman, Oliver Wolcott. Samuel Huntington and William Williams and some people may know about them.

Kym (50:26)
William Williams is new to me and man, your parents had fun with that. know. Williams.

Jennifer (50:31)
Willie Williams. So we have information, lots of information about these guys in the library, they show up a lot because they were obviously appointed by the state to go, so they show up in a lot of documents. Two of them were governors, so we actually have portraits of two of them. So we're learning more about them. But in the exhibit, and we're gonna mention them in the exhibit, but that's not really what we wanna talk about. We actually wanna talk about a name at the bottom of the document, which is, it says, printed by Mary Catherine Goddard. And so here is this female's name on this iconic document. Why is it there? What does it mean? Who was she? And so we're able to learn all this information about Mary Catherine Goddard, who was a female printer in 1777 in Baltimore, but actually a Connecticut native. She was born in Groton, Connecticut. Groton? Yeah.

Kym (51:24)
Submarine capital of the entire world, Groton? Place where we moved when we moved here, Groton? The place where I used to walk to the Navy base, because that was my first job, Groton? on Military Highway. Don't walk there. There's no sidewalks.

Ashley (51:28)
That's the way our camp grew up.

Jennifer (51:39)
Would have been easier when she lived there.

Ashley (51:42)
Mary would have had an easier time.

Kym (51:44)
I did not and I was a child so I wore headphones on that.

Jennifer (51:48)
Yeah. So, yeah. So she just has this incredible story. It's just a really wonderful opportunity to be able to talk about the everyday people, right? And I mean, maybe she's not quite so everyday because she's a female printer in 1777, which is super rare. So we'll be able to talk a little bit more about her experiences and what led her to that path. She also served as Baltimore's postmaster and is probably like the first female postmaster in the U.S. So this really incredible person, what are the circumstances that kind of, she's there at this moment where the Congress is like, hey, we want another copy printed, can you do it for us? And she's like, okay. And she very proudly puts her name on it. So yeah, think the Connecticut's Revolution exhibit is an opportunity for us to definitely highlight our really great stuff, like the Declaration of Independence or this flag we were talking about. But also do it in a different way, right? So the information, we're gonna give you what you want, you wanna see the good stuff, I get it, but we're also going to challenge you to think about things in a different way and dig a little deeper, I guess.

Ashley (52:56)
It's a more holistic story, right? It's like a more of a, It's again, I think where we started when you were just, right? It's like the object in context, right? It's like there's multiple facets to that object, right? And multiple stories or directions that you can go and to highlight that. I mean, you must've like, I just imagine like looking closely at the document and then like seeing that little tiny fine print and feeling like, gem, unknown. What is this? Right? Like I just like, it's, it gives me tingly feelings.

Jennifer (53:23)
Yeah, it's really exciting. I mean, and we have such a treasure trove of stuff, you know, and so being able to bring it out and look at it with fresh 21st century eyes, I think is really exciting.

Kym (53:36)
Do you have a favorite exhibit that's up already? 

Jennifer (53:41)
I love Small But Mighty. Yeah. So Small But Mighty is basically a highlight of our three major collection areas. So political, military, and industrial history. And we have really cool things in all of them. We were able, when we did our renovation, we were able to add platforms, we were able to bring out three dimensional stuff. So for instance, we have some stuff from the two state houses, the one in Hartford and the one in New Haven. In fact, the New Haven State House was torn down and we have a boot scraper like in its chunk of, I don't know what would you call that? It's like not a brick. It's like a building brick thing. yeah, it's like a chunk of, yeah.

Kym (54:20)
meant

Matt (54:23)
granite or something.

Jennifer (54:25)
And it was in there and when they demolished the building, they just took the whole chunk with the boot scraper. So we were able to have that as a physical vestige of this building that's no longer there, right? Also talking, and we can use that to talk about what was state government like when you had to actually physically move from one building to the next. They started off, originally they would spend like a spring in one of them and the fall in the other. So if you think about like we have a trunk from the treasurer's office that was part of state government. They'd like pack up all their stuff and move it from Hartford to New Haven. And they like eventually they must have gotten tired of it. So they ended up doing like one year. Well, they ended instead of doing it like twice they would be like, okay, all year we're gonna be in Hartford or all year we're all gonna be in New Haven. And then eventually they were like in 1878 is when they decided to build the state capital in Hartford and they were like, that's it, we're moving back and forth. And if you think about it, it's not like they could just hop in a car and drive there.

Kym (55:22)
What mode of travel were they using? Horse and buggy? I don't know.

Jennifer (55:27)
Carriages and wagons and stuff like that in...so that's some of the stuff we have in the political section. We also have Connecticut Women's Suffrage Association collection. So that was the group of women who were trying to get suffrage in the late 1800s, early 1900s. So we have some items on display there. They're textiles. So that means they need to kind of rotate on and off display. So we're really so lucky to have that to kind of represent women's story, really trying to get the right to vote. We also have an actual voting machine from 1899 on display. And that was used in Weathersfield up until the 1950s. So it's actually like a physical, can go right up to it and kind of see all the buttons and the knobs and everything. In our military section, we have such a great collection of stuff from again, going back to the Revolution, but not as many things because it's such old history, but we do have the flag and we have different military accoutrements. We have a very strong collection in the Civil War era and also in World War I. And if you think about when the museum was built in 1910, when World War I ended, there was a real push to get stuff from the soldiers who were coming home. So we have a really incredible display right now of what it might have been like to be in the trenches in France during World War One. So we have all different objects a cot a pair of boots a bench. We just got a quartermaster's desk, which Was a like a desk that would fold up that you could have out  at camp

Kym (57:02)
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer (57:03)
And so all of that is kind of newly on display because of the addition of these platforms, we were able to bring out kind of some of the larger stuff that wouldn't fit into an exhibit case. But my favorite part of the Small But Mighty exhibit is the industrial section because so many products. Pewter. Yeah, well, pewter's one. There's there's.

Kym (57:23)
So many. Yes, from the

Ashley (57:24)
pulling out these.

Kym (57:26)
I know it from the outreach van.

Jennifer (57:29)
There's like a pewter picture or something. But so many iconic American products are made in Connecticut and it's kind of amazing. I mean everything from like Cabbage Patch Kids made in West Hartford.

Ashley (57:43)
Yeah.

Jennifer (57:45)
It's really cool. The other one that I was like, I don't know, feel like people of our age are all around the same age. Oh, you're a little younger, Kym.

Kym (57:52)
I'm the resident toddler. Like in so many ways. You guys talk about so many famous things and I'm like pewter.

Jennifer (57:59)
did you all have a plastic lunchbox that had a thermos inside? 

Kym (58:04)
You didn't have the matching thermos.

Matt (58:06)
It's in Norwich, right?

Jennifer (58:06)
Yeah, have American Thermos Company out of Norwich. So we have all these different, like we have Fraggle Rock one. We a Pigs in Space. have a Snoopy one. like they're.

Kym (58:18)
Snoopy there's someone that we cannot tell about that she knows.

Ashley (58:22)
there's a picture of it also in the outreach van because it was very much

Kym (58:26)
Yes.

Jennifer (58:28)
So one of the cool things we were able to do was to create a kitchen platform. So what we did was bring out all of these really cool kitchen artifacts that we had hanging around in storage. So we brought out a circa 1920s refrigerator that was a GE refrigerator. And then we have a 1930s era stove. It's called Universal, made by Landers, Frary, and Clark out of New Britain. And they were like a leading producer of kitchen household products. And so basically the stuff that we have on display is stuff that you would have seen in any American kitchen in the 1920s and 1930s. But guess what? It was all made in Connecticut. Who knew? And it's beautiful stuff, you know, cause it's that like kind of art deco-y. 20s and 30s and it all just like it's, it's form and function. It all looks beautiful. And it's just so much fun. It's so nostalgic, guess for a time I never actually experienced, I want to. It looks so good.

Kym (59:28)
was like, watch, know, like, don't know, Leave It To Beaver or something like that. And it's like, I was there. That is so cool. I, yeah, guys, I'm like, man, I'm the toddler. Matt's like, Norwich, I know exactly where these thermoses come from. Yeah, man, whatever. I like to sound like I know what I'm talking about. Third smallest, third smallest, it was me who knew that. So our podcast is called Under The Charter Oak.

Ashley (59:40)
Person person

Kym (59:52)
Thank you, Ashley. Listen, sometimes you gotta stop. There was a list, it was very funny to watch her come up with the name of this podcast. Took days. She was just rambling off random titles, checking them. It was very funny process. And resident toddler that I am, I kinda like that. I'll take that crown.

I didn't know that there was a story about the charert. I didn't know why we, I didn't know. I didn't know any of it. I wasn't here in the second grade when everybody learned this. And I think Ashley had researched it and knew it and that it was surprising because Matt, you not know? You knew?

Ashley (1:00:31)
No, he did know. ⁓

Matt (1:00:33)
knew I think when Ashley pitched the name.

Kym (1:00:37)
Yeah, and I didn't and was sort of like the test group of people who were like sure okay that can be the name. But there's like a story, there's like a heist there. I don't know if heist is the appropriate word, it feels appropriate. But you know we did a quick Google but it's so much more fun to hear someone tell the story. Like I think I saw that kitchen exhibit just when we were up there for something else and I was like, I think I feel like I saw Snoopy and was like, Snoopy and sort of kept going. It completely changes the tenor when someone's telling you the story. So can you tell us the story of the Charter Oak, why it matters, why Ashley fought so hard to have Charter Oak or Nutmeg in the title?

Ashley (1:01:17)
You did? Nutmeg, yeah. nutmeg was in the running. Right.

Kym (1:01:20)
It was on the list. But can you give us the story? Because my mouth fell open. I thought it was the coolest thing in the entire world.

Jennifer (1:01:29)
It's so cool. I mean, some of it is legendary. It's called the whole legend of the charter. We don't actually know exactly what happened, but what we do know is that Connecticut has really embraced the story, like up until today. Like there are still so many things named after the Charter Oak or if you bank. Right, I mean, you look at the quarters, you know, the series of US quarters that came out, Connecticut chose the Charter Oak to be their quarter. So first of all, I just want to say we do have an exhibit in Memorial Hall in the museum, which is called Rooted in Liberty. And this is using the original 1910 era exhibit cases that kind of came with the building and in the cases we talk about the legend and kind of its legacy. And we are able to do this first and foremost because we actually have the charter on display Yeah, we're really again This is one of those things where we're really fortunate to be connected with the Connecticut State Archives so the Connecticut State Archives has actually allowed a lot of the founding documents to be on display in the museum. So we have the fundamental orders of 1639, the Charter, Colony of Connecticut 1662, and then we have the two state constitutions. So the one from 1818 and the one from 1965. So we have the suite of Connecticut founding documents that are on display that you're not gonna get to see anywhere else. So that's in and of itself a reason to visit the museum. 

So the legend of the Charter Oak really relates directly to the charter that was given to the people of Connecticut in 1662. However, I'll just go one step further and say that the information that was in the charter of 1662 is actually based in the information that was in the fundamental orders of 1639. And so today we don't usually go by the Nutmegs state or we usually are called the constitution and that's what's on our license plate. And it's because of the fundamental orders that we get that name. And I remember, I'm not a native Connecticut. And so I didn't know why we were called the constitution state. I thought maybe like it was drafted here or something like the U.S. constitution, but no, that's not it at all, so just get that right out of your head.

Kym (1:03:44)
Until this moment I was like sure yeah, they made it. They signed it here. They got the paper from here. I got somewhere to go my car

Jennifer (1:03:51)
So the fundamental orders come out in 1639. So basically Reverend Thomas Hooker had brought his colony of pilgrims from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to Hartford and there was already a community in Weathersfield and there is a community in Windsor. And so they band together and they decide to come up with a document to rule themselves. And that's called the fundamental orders. We actually have the real thing on display in the museum. going on 400 years.

There, after a time, the colony wanted to kind of get official sovereign sanctioning of this arrangement. And so they sent a representative to England to kind of parlay with King Charles the second and to actually get a charter. So they come back with charter in 1662 and the charter is like unprecedented and like it gives them all this ability to do, to govern themselves. You know, there's a lot of research and I think 21st century angling of how we look at the charter. It's been widely celebrated in the past. I think there's an element of it that is a little less celebration. was really seems like it was used in a lot of ways to, as a tool to be able to take land away from indigenous people. So there's a whole another angle of it to look at that is far less celebratory than it's been, than it has how it's been treated in the past. Regardless, the charter was brought here in 1662 and eventually

Kym (1:05:10)
Mm-hmm.

Jennifer (1:05:28)
Some 20 years later, Charles II dies and his brother James takes over. And James wants to revoke all the charters that were given to the New England colonies and to create one large colony called the Dominion of New England. And so- Dominion. The Dominion, know. So this was 1687. So October 31st, and we just celebrated the anniversary. October 31st, 1687.

The people of Connecticut are supposedly in the spot where the old state house is in Hartford. They're meeting with the British delegation and they're planning on handing over the charter, at least that's what they're gonna tell them. But at a certain moment, all the candles are mysteriously snuffed out. One moment, right? And the charter is, this is the legend, the charter was passed out the window and it was taken off by horseback and the place of its hiding was a large tree on the Wyllys estate, which is actually where like the intersection of Charter Oak Boulevard and Charter Oak Places in Hartford. There's actually a monument marking the spot where the tree was. Now, it really didn't do anything different. Like they still, in the eyes of England, they had revoked the charter and it was still the dominion of New England, but it didn't last for that long. So when James I dies, they're able to kind of like just keep using the charter. And in fact, Connecticut is also known as the land of steady habits. And the charter is a really great

Kym (1:06:56)
Yes, is.

Jennifer (1:06:58)
example of that so even during the Revolution the people of Connecticut you know even when the Constitution the U.S. Constitution is being written people of Connecticut are like our charter is great like we're good with it so they just would like cross out any reference to the crown and the king and they continued to operate on the charter until the first Connecticut Constitution was written in 1818. So yeah, so the tree becomes legendary and it's this giant old oak tree. It becomes known as the Charter Oak. We actually have a painting of the tree in our collection by Charles Pranel. There's a...kind of a sister painting of it at the Wadsworth Athenaeum. It just becomes such a thing of legend, thinking about the spirit of independence, the stick-to-itiveness. We're not going to give in. We're going to use any means, by all means necessary, to kind of keep what we hold dear. 

And so, tragedy strikes in 1856, the tree is damaged in a storm and people are so distraught about this. We have photographs in the collection where people went and posed kind of like mourning photographs with the tree. We have drawings of it. We have some of them on display right now. We have someone very Victorian. They picked up oak leaves from the ground and they like put them in a frame, know, some like homage to the Charter Oak. There were dirges written, like there were like, just like all this stuff. And it, you know, the big thing is people chopped off pieces of it and they whittled them into things. like the chair that's in the Senate chamber in the state Capitol is said to have been made out of the charter oak. We have small things like brooches and jewelry and things like that. Although the frame that our charter is now on display in, it's right, it's got a charter at an oak theme with the oak leaves and the acorns. And that is supposedly made out of the charter oak as well. Although Mark Twain has like a really great quote about like if you added up all the stuff that. Yeah, it. All growth.

Ashley (1:09:04)
It does not equal to me.

Kym (1:09:06)
equals small

Matt (1:09:08)
It's a really big tree.

Jennifer (1:09:12)
One thing I feel like I should just mention to people if they want to come see the charter is that the charter that you'll see on display in the frame in this vault that was like brought over from the state Capitol, because remember the state library was over at the state Capitol prior and the vault had been built like specifically for this charter in the frame. So when they built the new building - I've actually seen a photograph of this - actually had a crane and they picked up the whole vault and they just dropped it into Memorial Hall. So the charter is on display where it kind of historically has been, it was designed to be displayed. However, the real thing is now in dark storage. So last year we... Yeah, it's a really old document and we know that light is not great for documents. So last year, the state archives went through whole process of having the document removed from the building and actually conserved. And then the decision was made when it came back to put it in dark storage. It...may be brought out for special occasions. And that's at the discretion of the state librarian. And in the meantime, it's very safe and we're preserving it for future generations. And we have a really high resolution image of the charter on display. And you can still see the original frame made maybe out of the charter oak. So you still don't get the same experience, but you can feel good knowing that the real thing is safe.

Kym (1:10:39)
I choose to believe the whole story. And I just, again, it's like, all of this, you know, resistance. And I'm like, all the candles, all the candles blew out at one time. Every single candle. Was there a cabal of people? It's an amazing story and I completely understand why. I actually, when you mentioned those quarters, I think I'd forgotten all about them, but we had the, am I the only one? Did you guys have? You can put the quarters in the map. And now I want to find that map. It's on my parents' house. has to be. It would come out. some of the circles were made better than others. But now I really want to find that map. So thank you so much for sharing that, because I remember being just absolutely.

Jennifer (1:11:11)
but I felt like every time you folded it like.

Kym (1:11:29)
Shocked that there was like this whole big thing that happened in in tiny, Connecticut so I'm just kind of wondering right again sort of going back to Changes and things that you are working on through inventory and things like that are there like what's next right so definitely the Connecticut Revolution exhibit for the 250 is that kind of the the biggest project that you guys are working on or there's some things I know I always have random ideas that like live in the back of my mind that I think of at 3 a.m. But any like dreams for the museum?

Jennifer (1:12:06)
We have so much fun stuff in store, I think. And part of that will be the inventory, right? And really understanding what we have. Part of it will be our new collections management system, Connecticut collections, which will have an option for a public facing option. So people will actually be able to search our collection for the first time in forever. And it's going to take us a while to get there because of the 44,000 objects. Eventually, we would like to photograph everything so that you could actually.

Kym (1:12:36)
I know someone who's great at photographing puppets at the very. You would like, you know, I can I can hook you up. People. Whatever the things I think.

Ashley (1:12:40)
We photograph puppets


Jennifer (1:12:50)
So that will be something that will really transform access to our collection in a way that it has never seen. So that's very exciting. And that will be, again, multi-year. We actually have funding to hire interns starting in the summer of 2026. So we'll be hiring interns to help us like every semester get through the inventory. And that will take us about five years. look.

Ashley (1:13:16)
I was going to say that's a multi-year project.

Jennifer (1:13:18)
Yeah, it definitely is. So in the meantime, we are planning our Connecticut Revolution exhibit, which will open again, July 20...July 4th, 2026. And it'll be open for a year. And then I think we'll be able to use some of the tech that we're hoping to purchase some digital kiosks and implement technology a little bit more into our exhibits that are existing. So I think it'll be a really fun process to kind of use some of the tools we got from the Connecticut Revolution exhibit and then implement them into what's already on display. One of the things we have on an ongoing project is a project about the Connecticut governors. So when you walk into Memorial Hall, it's like 73 governors looking at you. And it's.

Kym (1:13:57)
It's a lot of ours. They're all right there.

Jennifer (1:14:00)
Again, as we were talking about, an object is just an object. If you don't know anything about that governor, it doesn't really mean a lot. And so we've been actually working with other interns on different semesters to kind of build stories for each of the governors so you can better understand kind of the context they're coming from. What are they doing in the state? How do they relate to national history? We were specifically looking at how do they relate to stories of slavery and freedom? Because what's interesting to think about is there was a period of time where some of the Connecticut's governors actually owned slave, which is really like no one would think that of Connecticut, but even Jonathan Trumbull, who was the governor during the revolution and fighting for freedom, he enslaved people. So how do we just dig deeper and find more complex stories? Like the real, the stuff no one ever talked about before, right? So it's a real opportunity. Like basically every facet of our collection needs.

Kym (1:14:33)
Yeah.

Jennifer (1:14:56)
needs that kind of examination. So we'll be busy for a while. One thing I will say that is kind of my dream is we have an area in the back of the museum that was designed to be exhibit space, but it hasn't actually been exhibit space for about 25 to 30 years. And so we, my team has been working on trying to clean it up a bit and get it back open to the public to create a whole new exhibit space. So basically the area that is Small but Mighty, Connecticut Makes History and the Colt collection. So we do have a very, I should notice there are, we have like a very significant collection of Colt firearms in our collection. It's like nationally significant. Those two galleries together equals the same space that's not being used right now. So we will double our exhibit space. Yeah, so it's a really exciting project. There are lots of hoops to jump through before we can get there. Right now it is full of very heavy industrial equipment that we would have to hire a rigging company to move. Some of them were craned into the building. It's very heavy stuff. But we're hoping that we'll actually, we might, we haven't decided yet, but maybe we will use those objects for an exhibit back there. So yeah, so it's a really exciting, we kind of have to pace ourselves.

Ashley (1:16:20)
You've got a few projects.

Jennifer (1:16:21)
One step at a time, but that's my dream. So I hope in, yeah, maybe 10 years, we can invite you back.

Kym (1:16:28)
Right, yeah, every decade or so we take a visit up to 231. That's so awesome. And so like I said, I do a lot of outreach, but Matt and Ashley are going to a lot of outreach events and I tend to bring the museum postcards with us. And again, like I said, some people are like, we got that? Yes, yes, we do have this museum. So is there something that you would wanna say or share with people who maybe see this...that postcard and are like a little intrigued. Like just, is there something that you want, you want to share with people? You've told us so much and like now I'm like, should I go up there on a

Ashley (1:17:09)
No, I was like, I think I need to go. think we need a little.

Kym (1:17:11)
Yeah, I've got a day off coming and I might need to go up just like as Joe, Connecticut. But is there is there like one thing that you want to share with the esidents of Connecticut about the museum and it's important and like just  just something that you want people to know?

Jennifer (1:17:28)
Yeah, I think something I've been thinking about a lot is that it's the people's collection. It's not our collection. We're just taking care of it. You know, it is really something that belongs to each and every person who lives in Connecticut. And you should come and see it. It's free. Love that. We're not open on the weekends right now, so it makes it a little bit more challenging. But I know we are working towards a goal of being open on Saturdays, hopefully in the near future. If you can take some time off on an afternoon, we're open 10:00 to 4:00, Monday through Friday. And yeah, just come and enjoy it. And when you see the stuff hanging there, try to dig deeper and think about the different, what you can learn from these objects. And also remember that, yeah, this is your stuff. This is the stuff that helps us understand our past and the people who came before us.

Kym (1:18:23)
Well, on that note, and can inform the future. I was gonna get to my little tagline. So thank you so much for coming down here to tell us about this. Like just as like, you know, Kym Connecticut, now I've claimed, I claim it all. This is so interesting and so fascinating. And the way that you tell these stories just like make them so fruitful. So thank you so much for coming down and telling us more about the museum. And we hope that our listeners join us next time under the Charter Oak, where we preserve the past to inform the future.