More old newspapers to go online

Congratulations to the Connecticut State Library for winning a third grant for its Connecticut Digital Newspaper Project. This allows the Library to digitize another 100,000 pages from the microfilm it holds from old Connecticut newspapers. Those pages will be added to the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America newspaper database.

The latest selections, scheduled to be online by the fall of 2019, include some Hartford-based publications; they’re listed below according to category, with their years of publication. The complete list is here.

African American:

  • Hartford-Springfield Chronicle, 1940
  • Hartford Chronicle, 1946-1947
  • Connecticut Chronicle (Hartford, Conn.), 1948
  • New England Bulletin (Hartford, Conn.), 1949

Labor:

  • The Examiner (Hartford, Conn.), 1881-1888
  • The Weekly Examiner (Hartford, Conn.), 1890-1901
  • Hartford Labor, 1894
  • The Labor Standard (Hartford, Conn.), 1910-1922
  • The Connecticut Craftsman (Hartford, Conn.), 1932

Listen up! There’s a Connecticut history podcast

If you need to tune out the everyday world for a little while (and who doesn’t?) listen to “Grating the Nutmeg,” a podcast about Connecticut history.  A co-production of the magazine Connecticut Explored and the Office of the State Historian, “Grating” already has an archive of 34 episodes, and some center on Hartford. The most recent of them: Episode 32, entitled “Hops, Beer, and Hartford’s 1902 Brewery Strike.” Guest Steve Thornton of the Shoeleather History Project tells what happened when workers at Hartford’s four (yes, four!) breweries went on strike. There’s also “The NEW Harriet Beecher Stowe Center” (Episode 31), “Art, Agency, Legacy: Amistad Center for Art & Culture” (Episode 29), and “The Smithsonian’s Eric Hintz: Hartford As a Place of Invention (Episode 22), among others.