Collections : [The Litchfield Historical Society]

Letter from Putnam Catlin to his Steuben Butler explaining his family's financial situation and the difficulties he faces providing his children with education due to both tuition costs and to the loss of labor on his farm if he doesn't have them there to help. He notes that he may be able to sell land to pay for his son George Catlin to attend the Litchfield Law School for a year. He writes, "If he shall persist in the choice of law he will have to glean for himself an Education in some law office, perhaps, I may indulge him a year at Litchfield."

This collection includes photographic prints created by Richard Southall Grant for Irving Holley and his wife, Mary Lewis Sharp Holley, of Torrington.

Collection of materials purchased by Robert Cooley relating generally to Litchfield and the surrounding area. The collection includes individual 18th and 19th century letters and documents; deeds and other legal papers related to Capt. Miles Beach, 1766-1800s; photographs, including cabinet cards, cartes-de-viste, ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, tintypes loose, in cases, and/or in albums; materials related to the Coley, Tice, and Lewis family lineages and genealogy; and 19th and 20th century publications and ephemera, including newspapers, magazines, journals, pamphlets and other printed items.

Robert Wakeman Hill (1828-1909) was a noted architect. He received his early education in the schools of Waterbury and attended the Young Men's Institute in New Haven. He studied architecture with Henry Austin of New Haven and A. C. Nash of Milwaukee, Wis. He returned to Connecticut in 1858 and practiced architecture for a short time in Naugatuck. In 1863, he moved to Waterbury and spent the remainder of his life there. Hill was architect for the state under Governors Bigelow, Waller, Harrison and Lounsbury. He built the state armories at Waterbury, New London, Bridgeport, Norwalk and New Britain, and furnished plans for the Waterbury City Hall, the New Britain Opera House, the Thomaston Opera House, and the Winchester Soldier's Memorial in Winsted, among many others. He designed a number of buildings in Litchfield, including the County Court House (1889), the fire house (1894), two hotels, and the house of Edgar van Winkle, Hill-home. Hill died in 1909.

Research files and other materials related to Samuel Fisher's 1946 book, Litchfield Law School, 1774-1833: Biographical Catalogue, containing information about its students. There are also papers related to other aspects of Litchfield's history.

The papers of New York City banker and businessman Samuel Flewwelling (1774 or 5-1849) primarily relating to property held by his wife, Julia Elvira Canfield Flewwelling (1791-1868), and him in the Western Reserve, later Ohio. Following Samuel's death, the properties were managed by William Mackay (1795-1873), a New York City businessman and the husband of Caroline Emma Canfield Mackay. The collections includes indentures, agreements, leases, deeds, statements and accounts, and correspondence.

Payroll of a company of Connecticut State troops in the service of the United States, commanded by Capt. Samuel Waugh.

The Sarah E. Hutchinson Friendship Album (1971-31-4) contains a few illustrations along with poetry written to Sarah Hutchinson or notes from family and friends in and around Plattekill and Ulsterville, New York. Most of the entries are from 1839, but a few can be found from later years such as 1840 or 1853.

The research materials related to Dr. Solyman Brown compiled by Dr. Leonard Elkins, who was working on an uncompleted biography of Dr. Brown.

Stephanie Whitney Cunningham manuscript (2011-29-0) is an unfinished manuscript draft of "From Bride to Great-Grandmother in Litchfield" by Stephanie Whitney Cunningham. Written in a small spiral bound notebook, the manuscript gives insight into the author's life in Litchfield, as well as the social scene, families, buildings, etc. that were present in the community in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.