Browse Items (34 total)

"For about seventy-five years, our forefathers in this vicinity traveled to the southern part of Saybrook for religious worship. Saybrook, first settled by the English in 1635, was bounded on the south by Long Island Sound, on the north by Haddam,…

During the war of 1812, part of the British fleet was detailed to cruise Long Island Sound in order, among other things, to blockade New London Harbor. The commander of that fleet suspected the ship-owners of Essex of having a conspiracy to destroy…

The real origins of sailboat racing on the Connecticut River date back to the early 1900's when shad fishermen raced their "dragnet" boats informally each spring. However it was the Great Depression that provided the impetus for organized dinghy…

The Dolly Madison made her first trips on the Connecticut River in 1964, after having spent two years on the Potomac River as an excursion boat from Washington, D.C., to Mount Vernon, Virginia. Together with her sister ship , the Martha Washington,…

The firm of Looby and Fargo, manufactures of cylindrical brushes, goblet and gun brushes, also dish mops was founded in 1888. The factory building had been put up in 1858 by Edwin Kelsey for the production of ivory goods. It provided excellent…

The Essex Boat Works fire started at about 6:15 P.M. on Saturday, January 20th, 1968. Mr. Stuart Ingersoll, owner of the Works, had just left the premises, at 6, and later reported that he had not noticed anything amiss. However, in about 15…

A rope was was a very important industry of any town which engaged in shipbuilding. When Essex people speak of the old rope walk, they usually mean the one which extended from North Main Street near the Bushnell street corner down to a point near…

The site of the old Grist Mill is at the mouth of the Falls River, east of the present River Road, just off what is now called Mill Road.

The accounts and dates of the various mills in this area are not completely clear. However, the following…

Steamboating on the Connecticut River lasted nearly 140 years, ending in 1931 when the large propeller-driven steamers Middletown and Hartford took their last runs. The nineteenth century was the heyday of the side-wheeler steamboats such as that…

The Pratt House at 20 West Avenue in Essex, a two-story, white clapboard structure, takes its name from William Pratt who emigrated from England in 1633 with his brother and sister to Newtowne, today known as Cambridge, Massachusetts. Then in 1636,…