My grandmother traveled to Hartford, Connecticut, with her granddaughters, my cousin and I, when we were quite young.  Hartford is the capital of CT.   It is midway between New York City and Boston.  It is approximately 18 square miles and located on the Connecticuts River.

We visited the first YWCA.  Hartford built the first YWCA in 1867.  Hartford began construction in 1884 on the first permanent and triumphal memorial arch in America, named “Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch” in Bushell Park.

We saw the  Bulkeley Bridge, the largest stone arch bridge in the world and built in 1905.

We toured the first black congregation church.  It was located at the Talcott Street Congregational Church in Hartford, CT.  The church was originally called the African Religious Society.  The original church was built in 1826.  They housed fugitive slaves until the end of the Civil War.  This church operated a public school, and was at a time, the only place black children could learn to read and write.  The teachers were Ann Plato, an African American poet, and Augustus Washington famed daguerreotype (the first photographic process).  Reverend James WC Pennington, was one of the founding members of the congregation.  He was among the citizens who came together with African American and White Americans.  In 1860, this became home of the city’s oldest African American congregation.  This church occupies an important role in Hardford’s architectural and African American History.  The church was constructed in in 1871, and still has the original doors.

We toured The Connecticut Freedom Trail.  This was the road to liberty via the Underground Railroad:  gravesites, monuments, homes, and buildings that are associated with movement toward freedom.  The Connecticut Freedom Trail documented and designated sites that embodied the struggle toward freedom and human dignity; and also ceebrates the accomplishments of the State’s African Community, and promotes heritage tourism.

Several of the sites are associated with the Amistad case of 1839-1842.  A group of West Africans including men, women, and children were illegally captured from Sierra Leone; and transported across the Atlantic.  They were put aboard a coastal schooner La Amistad to work on Cuban sugar plantations.  The West Africans revolted, and took control of the boat.  They were later spotted off Long Island and brought by the US Navy into New London.  The nineteen month trial and the inhumane conditions suffered while incarcerated, spurred abolitionist fervor in the state.  Former President John Quincy Adams argued West Africans case in the US Supreme Court and won.  The Supreme Court decided that the Africans had been captured in violation to US law, and ordered their release.

Laura Wheeler Waring, a black women, born in 1887 in Hartford, CT, is world renowned portrait artist and was a member of the Hartford Public High School Class of 1906.  Throughout Hartford, CT’s history, Black Americans have been at the forefront of breaking through barriers and achieving unprecedented milestones; including the first black diplomat and the first Black Mayor in New England.

We stayed with family, and had ice cream on Park Street at AC Peterson Farms.  They have served food for 100 years in Hardfrord, Ct.  We sat on the outdoor picnic tables and looked out at the Long Island Sound.

18,000 years ago, The Connecticut, Long Island Sound, and much of Long Island were covered by a thick sheet of ice; and part of the Late Wisconsin Glacier.  The Long Island Sound basin existed before the glaciers came.  Glacier meltwater formed “Lake Connecticut”, a fresh water lake in the basin, until 8,000 years ago.  Seawater overflowed into the basin.  It transformed from a non tidal freshwater lake, to a tidal, saline arm of the sea.

This water was loaded with porgy, butterfish, flounder, black sea bass, bluefish, Atlantic Bonita and false albacore, striped bass, white perch, shad, sand tiger shark, sandbar shark and dogfish.  They have bluemussels, eastern oysters, hard clam, Bay scallops and snails.  They have red and blue crabs, shrimp and lobsters. They have sea turtles, snapping turtles, toads; and water and hog nose snakes.

It is unfortunate that, today these waters are heavily poputed with heavy metals including:  copper, lead, and mercury.  It has groundwater seepage, surface runoff, rainfall, storm drain overflow, sewage treatment plant overflow, and industrial waste water.