History @ Trinity

It is becoming apparent that the Trinity History Department is an incubator of teaching talent. At the 2016 Trinity College Graduation Ceremony held this past May, another historian (3 in 11 years) was honored.  Jennifer M. Regan-Lefebvre, Assistant Professor of History, received the Dean Arthur H. Hughes Award for Achievement in Teaching, an award that recognizes excellence in teaching by junior members of the Faculty.

Congratulations!

February 18, 2015 – Samuel S. Kassow ’66, Charles H. Northam Professor of History, was honored this week in Warsaw, Poland, for his service to Polish Culture. Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage Malgorzata Omilanowka, presented a medal to Kassow in a ceremony on Monday, February 16.

Kassow served as lead historian for two of eight galleries of the new POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which opened in October 2014 on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. His 2007 book, Who Will Write Our History?, is set to be adapted for the screen by director Roberta Grossman and executive producer Nancy Spielberg. Kassow is also in the process of completing a highly anticipated book called Listen and Believe: The Ghetto Reportage of Peretz Opoczynski and Jozeph Zelkowicz, to be released this year by Yale University Press.

On February 17th, Professor Heather Cateau will be coming to Trinity to give a lecture on Connecticut-Caribbean relationships throughout history, ranging from the 18th century to modern day relationships. Professor Cateau will be coming to Trinity to give the Mead Lecture in History, Trinity’s most prestigious endowed annual lecture which was established in 1952 by George Jackson Mead. Professor Cateau is a senior lecturer in Caribbean History at the University of West Indies’ St. Augustine Campus and the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education. Professor’s Cateau’s latest publications are Beyond Tradition, co-edited with Rita Pemberton and The Caribbean in the Atlantic World, which was co-authored with John Campbell. Her recent work deals with plantation and enslavement systems in the Caribbean.

Professor Cateau’s lecture, entitled “Caribbean-Connecticut Connections from the 18th Century to the 21st Century,” discusses the range of economic, social and other connections that existed between Connecticut and the English speaking islands of the Caribbean, Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad and Tobago. The basic thrust of the lecture is that the immigration from the West Indies to Connecticut, especially Hartford, is only the modern form of the historical connections between Connecticut and the West Indies, a product of the 20th and 21st centuries. The historical connections between the two stretch back to before America was an independent nation in the 18th century. In the 18th and 19th century, the relationship between the two involved many people from New England coming down to the West Indies, slave trade, and commerce between the two.

This summer I was given the opportunity to conduct research for the Simsbury Historical Society located in Simsbury, Connecticut. My research was centered on the Native Americans who lived in this area before, and at the time of settler contact. The goal of my research was to find out as much as possible about the tribes that lived and interacted with the settlers. I put together a presentation and, a WordPress informational and bibliographic site, and assisted in finding useful information for the town of Simsbury’s upcoming celebration in the sSpring of 2015. My application to the Colin Leroy ’10 Research Fund was generously accepted, and the grant funded my research.
As mentioned, this internship involved studying the Native Americanss in the Simsbury region called the Massacoes. With no pre-set agenda, I delved into the research with a broad plan to learn as much as possible about the archaeology, history, lifestyle, and relationship with the surrounding environment and with the settlers. I generally found information on all of these topics.Gaps in the literature did exist, such as indications of highly distinctive cultural practices to that would have set the Massacoes apart from Native neighbors and detailed correspondence (not including deeds) with the settlers. What I did find included information about a small tribe living amongst major tribal powers with close ties to the Farmington River. This tribe played a major role in the formation and eventual incorporation of Simsbury into Connecticut. Through local archaeological finds, it is possible to imagine the Massacoes’ presence in this region.
To complete my research I traveled to various libraries, schools, historical societies and museums. The locations include Trinity College’s Raether and Watkinson Library, the Simsbury Historical Society, the Simsbury Public Library, the Connecticut Historical Society, the Institute for American Indian Studies, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, the Salmon Brook Historical Society, the Windsor Historical Society and the Yale Sterling Library. I met several experts such as Dr. Kenneth Feder, Dr. Marc Banks, Dr. Lucianne Lavin and Dr. Eileen Fielding who helped provide me with facts on the history of the Native Americans and the ecology of this region. I also received counseling from my adviser, Professor Wickman, and also worked closely with Rick Wagner and Joe Buda from the Simsbury Historical Society. I would like to thank all of these individuals for giving me advice, counseling, time, and the Colin Leroy ’10 Research Fund for making this possible.

By Cody Patrina