Connecticut “Firsts”

• First issue (1764) of the Connecticut Courant (now the Hartford Courant), the longest continually published newspaper in the United States
• Earliest known view of a Connecticut town, painted by Sybil Huntington May of Haddam, about 1756
• American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, Hartford, 1796, the first cookbook written by an American and published in the United States
• A New and Correct Map of the United States of North America, 1784, engraved, printed, and published by Abel Buell of New Haven less than a year after the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War

17th-century history

• English sword carried in the Pequot War of 1637
• Drum used to call town meetings in Farmington in 1650
• One of the two earliest known chairs made in America (the other at The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• Chair owned by Governor John Winthrop Jr. from about 1660
• Native American deeds, indentures, and petitions, including deeds granting lands to English colonists bearing the mark of Uncas, leader of the Mohegan tribe

Revolutionary Era

• Rare Tory officer’s coat and waistcoat
• Connecticut State Hero, Nathan Hale’s diary
• Rare set of 4 hand-colored engravings by Amos Doolittle (1754-1832) showing the Battles of Lexington and Concord, 1775
• Common round hat with bullet holes from the shot that killed Phineas Meigs, the last Connecticut casualty of the Revolutionary War
• Elaborately-engraved powder horns

18th-century Connecticut furniture

• Fine examples of regional styles including spectacularly flamboyant high chests and chests-on-chests from southeastern Connecticut (Norwich/Colchester) and highly desirable tea and dressing tables from the Connecticut River Valley

Childhood items

• Connecticut-made toys and games from the 18th – 20th centuries, including: a 1930s Mickey Mouse pull toy, uncut box boards for “Rainbow Chime” and “Dial Handphone” toys from the Gong Bell Toy Co. in East Hampton, and 20th-century favorites like Legos, Pez dispensers, Wiffle balls, Silly Putty, and Cabbage Patch dolls
• Cradles, buggies, wagons, cribs, miniature furniture, and mechanical banks
• Extensive collection of 18th and 19th-century children’s books

Celebrity-related items

• Mark Twain’s 1886 bicycle
• Samuel Colt’s family baby crib
• Fabric samples for a suit worn by George Washington to promote
• America’s “infant manufactures”
• Flag that Abraham Lincoln pushed aside in his box at Ford’s Theater at the moment he was shot
• Katharine Hepburn’s 1930s tennis outfit and 1970s golf clubs

Advertising

• The nation’s largest and finest collection (65 examples) of 18th- and 19th-century tavern and inn signs, remarkable survivors of early roadside art
• Stunning art nouveau-style color lithograph poster advertising Columbia Chainless bicycles
• Extensive collection of 19th-century broadsides and trade cards advertising Connecticut businesses and manufacturers

Women’s history

• 1669 complaint against a Wethersfield woman on suspicion of witchcraft
• The First, Second, and Last Scene of Mortality, embroidery by Prudence Punderson of Preston, 1776-1783, an unique 18th-century artistic representation of human mortality within a contemporary interior
• Travel journals, correspondence, guest books, photographs, awards, and other personal papers of Beatrice Fox Auerbach, including correspondence with Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as business records of G. Fox & Co., the well-known department store
• WWII era “Women Work for Victory: Farm, Office, Factory” WPA poster
• 19th-century woman’s bicycle and bicycling outfit

African American history

• Rare needlework sampler by an African American girl from Old Saybrook
• Wooden flour scoop made about 1800 by Cuff Smith, whose father Venture Smith wrote an autobiography relating his capture in Africa and eventual path to freedom
• Paintings by African-American artists Nelson Primus and Charles Ethan Porter
• Daguerreotypes by Hartford-based early photographer Augustus Washington
• One of the earliest known (1835-1845) anti-slavery banners documenting Connecticut’s abolitionist movement
• Civil War letters from Joseph O. Cross of the Connecticut 29th Regiment to his wife
• 1803 broadside advertising a $10 reward for return of an 18-year-old runaway slave named Caesar

Industrial History

• 1870s “corpse preserver”, used to chill bodies of the deceased during mourning periods
• Blickensderfer typewriters and other early typewriters outfitted with experimental or alternative (non-QWERTY) keyboards
• Extensive collection of early 20th-century chrome housewares
• Unique prototype model for shelf clock to be mass-produced of interchangeable parts, made by Eli Terry, Plymouth, probably about 1814

Chinese Educational Mission

• Extensive collection of letters, papers, and photographs from the Chinese Educational Mission, headquartered in Hartford, 1872-1881