Connecticut's Archives Online Collection context
Summary
- Date:
- 1808-2004
- Abstract:
- There are original documents, personal papers, and artifacts about this area and the wider town of Lyme in the mid-19th into the 20th-century. Subjects include Brockway shipbuilding, oakum manufacturing, shad fishing, and quarrying, Connecticut River navigation, World War I, and the Brockway/Joshuatown one-room school. Family materials are for LaPlace, Warner, Huey, Putnam, and Sutton. Material about her father, Robert Huey, and shad fishing, is strong. The collection reflects the deep roots of Elizabeth Putnam's family and her own lifetime (1912-2007) in the Brockway Ferry area of Lyme, CT. Her books, Brockway's Ferry, Lyme, Connecticut 1991 and a 2002 revised edition with Wendolyn Hill History and Memoir (1991 and the) hold a rich history of the Brockway Ferry, Joshuatown, and Hadlyme areas of Lyme, Conn.
- Extent:
- 5 Linear Feet
- Language:
- English .
Background
- Acquisition information:
- Items were donated by Elizabeth Huey Putnam.
- Scope and Content:
The collection's materials range in type, period, and subjects from the 18th through the 20th century. Topically they include Putnam's own family history (Warner and Putnam families), Lyme people, local trades, industry, economic, and historical development of the Brockway Ferry area along the Connecticut River, and their roles in the town's development. Putnam's own "Memoir and History of Brockway Ferry" is an important and well-documented resource. Also, there is detailed "real-life" documentation of the area and times in other items, many originals, such as store cash books, ledgers, and ship (sloop and schooner) trip logs. Her photograph and postcard collections are excellent and rare documentary records for home life, shad fishing, river trade, navigation, and district elementary school system practice. There are also unique artifacts from the shad fishing industry and Connecticut River navigation.
- Biographical / Historical:
Elizabeth Warner Huey Putnam was a life-long resident of Brockway's Ferry, Lyme, born October 22, 1912. Her personal story recorded in her own writings as well as various collected papers, ephemera and objects which she donated to the Archives all reflect a long and close connection of the family to the unique history and features of the Brockway Ferry hamlet. Her family's home was in the former store/post office and steamboat landing and close to the landing site for the Brockway Ferry to Deep River. Living at river's edge meant access to shad fishing and space for her father's shad nets and boats. The old Brockway Quarry, where her father worked, was above the family home and her later home was on the former site of an early Lyme industry, medicinal lint made at the oakum mill. Her mother's roots were in early families in Lyme - Brockway, Warner and LaPlace. Her father immigrated from Ireland.
- Arrangement:
Because of the large number of items in the collection, they have been grouped by type and subject categories for safe storage and viewing accessibility in different containers and locations within the Archives. Shelf locations are Artifacts, Family Papers, Flat (Boxes), Newspaper, Photographs, Postcard Albums, Audio, oversize in Flat File drawers.
Access
- LOCATION OF THIS COLLECTION:
-
Lyme Public LibraryLocal History Archives482 Hamburg RoadLyme, CT 06371, USA
- CONTACT:
-
(860) 598-9760lymepublichall1887@gmail.com