This meticulously researched history tells the story of one of America's oldest and most intriguing towns. From its early colonial origins to its crucial role in the Revolutionary War and beyond, Old Windsor has been a center of industry and innovation in New England for centuries. With vivid detail and engaging storytelling, Howard brings the town's rich history to life. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

In 1633, explorers from Plymouth Bay reported the Windsor area to be a fine place both for plantation and trade, and not long after, several groups of intrepid pilgrims established the first English settlement in Connecticut. The early settlers took advantage of the areas fertile river floodplains, extensive forests, and swift river currents. Windsor has grown from a remote outpost at the confluence of the Farmington and Connecticut Rivers into a thriving agricultural, commercial, and suburban community. Highlighting themes important to Windsors history, this compelling visual survey portrays the traditional landmarks of a New England village: the meetinghouse and common green, field and forest, ferry and mill. It also reveals the faces of past residents engaged in their everyday lives at work and at play, in trouble and in celebration.

Tracing the first three generations in Puritan New England, this book explores changes in language, gender expectations, and religious identities for men and women. The book argues that laypeople shaped gender conventions by challenging the ideas of ministers and rectifying more traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity. Although Puritan's emphasis on spiritual equality had the opportunity to radically alter gender roles, in daily practice laymen censured men and women differently – punishing men for public behavior that threatened the peace of their communities, and women for private sins that allegedly revealed their spiritual corruption. In order to retain their public masculine identity, men altered the original mission of Puritanism, infusing gender into the construction of religious ideas about public service, the creation of the individual, and the gendering of separate spheres. With these practices, Puritans transformed their 'errand into the wilderness' and the normative Puritan became female.

Over the last 30 years, the Connecticut Office of State Archaeology and the Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service have entered into a partnership employing ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to the study of the state’s archaeology and history. As a result, many historical cemeteries and places of note in Connecticut have been investigated. The authors have selected 10 geophysical surveys, which have used GPR as a non-intrusive, non-destructive exploratory tool, that have elicited positive results in the search for unmarked burials, confirmation of marked burials and to authenticate areas of known historical events. This book narrates the stories of GPR studies at 10 historical sites in Connecticut, spanning the 17th to the 20th centuries. Each chapter investigates and highlights a ‘history mystery’ and differing aspects of our research, including the ‘lost’ grave of an African-American Revolutionary War veteran, the verification of French Revolutionary War military personnel in a mass grave, the detection of a below-ground hidden 19th-century family burial tomb, the discovery of hurriedly dug, unmarked burials associated with the 1918 influenza pandemic and the detection of the unknown location of a 1941 military plane crash site, among others. Professionally, the authors have over 40 years’ experience in GPR, soil science and archaeology. They bring their collective expertise to the reader in a scientific approach with a personal, story-telling touch. Each chapter delves into the history of the sites and the nature of the geophysical search (i.e., how the equipment was used) and the interpretation of the data in regard to solving a historical problem.