Antiques

Magazine Antiques, July, 2003

I am an American. I was born and reared in Hartford, in the State of Connecticut--anyway, just over the river, in the country. So I am a Yankee of the Yankees--and practical; yes, and nearly barren of sentiment, I suppose--or poetry, in other words.

Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, 1889

Connecticut is the third smallest state in the Union, just behind Rhode Island and Delaware. As early as 1760 Connecticut was compared to "a cask of good liquor, tapped at both ends, at one of which Boston draws, and New York at the other, till little is left in it but lees and settlings." Nonetheless, Connecticut Yankees were people of steady habits, vigorous conservatism, acrid humor, and intense self-discipline, which amply made up for the alleged lees and settlings judged to be their lot. They were a migrant people who took advantage of their many harbors and river ports to distribute their bountiful crops to ports up and down the East Coast and to the West Indies.

Among the Connecticut towns to profit by seafaring initiative was Stonington Borough, a narrow rocky peninsula jutting southward into the Atlantic Ocean. In the last half of the eighteenth century its traders recognized emerging opportunities in fishing and coastal commerce, bringing prosperity that was enhanced during the first half of the nineteenth century by sealing and whaling. Sealing voyages to the region south of Cape Horn could last three years. Edmund Fanning and Nathaniel B. Palmer were particularly successful sealers, the former bringing back a net profit of $53,000 after a single voyage at the turn of the century, and the latter, aged about twenty, ranging south of Cape Horn to the South Shetland Islands and the Antarctic on the small sloop Hero. In 1829 Benjamin Morrill, accompanied by his young wife, rounded the Cape of Good Hope on course for New Zealand, where they hoped to find seals. Failing in that quest they sailed to Manila and the Fiji Islands gathering beches-de-mer, sea cucumbers that were boiled, dried, smoked, and much savored in those parts. In the process some of the crew were captured and killed by Fiji cannibals. Because the voyages were so long and seamen were relatively ill paid, Stonington captains began to stop in the Azores to enlist experienced Portuguese crews, who then settled in a section of Stonington that was undeveloped because of its susceptibility to storms.

As a thriving port, Stonington was a logical destination for the railroad, and in 1837 it became the site of the first Connecticut terminus on the route from Boston to New York City. Passengers changed from train to steamboat at Stonington and continued by sea to New York. Until the 1880s this was the fastest, most comfortable, and safest route to New York. It was used by nearly twelve hundred passengers a day, and, for those who wanted a respite before embarking on the steamer, the railroad built the grand Wadawanuck House Hotel in Stonington.

Before the new route was opened, travelers along the Connecticut shore enjoyed what one state historian called "perhaps the worst road in the whole state." James Birket, a merchant and sea captain from Antigua, took this road in the mid-eighteenth century, reporting: "We traveled through a great deal of Stony uneven road until we got to...Stoninton being 21 miles where we dined upon Salt Pork and Turneps with thick Cyder to drink, here we Cross'd the Mistick river at a wooden bridge and So proceeded through Groton a very Stoney uneven Country but no high land, only full of Small hills and risings and failings."

Wendell Garrett