The Connecticut River is New England’s longest river, flowing 410 miles from its source at the Canadian border to its mouth at Old Saybrook, Connecticut, on Long Island Sound. The Connecticut or Great River (as it was also called) first drew permanent English settlements in the 1630s for the fur trade, but subsequently the productive, alluvial farmland along its banks was its chief attraction. The rich topsoil along the banks of the Connecticut River produced bountiful crops and grains. Surpluses connected the region through investment and trade to the larger Atlantic World. Some goods shipped overland to Boston, but most were sent down the Connecticut River, to port cities along the eastern seaboard and to the West Indies, where the food and wood were needed to support the sugar plantations. This trade supported the economy of western New England, and was especially vital after 1750, when the area’s farmers supplied troops during the French & Indian and the Revolutionary Wars, creating wealth for many land-owning families.

This region also developed a pre-Revolutionary material culture quite distinct from eastern Massachusetts or western New York. The dominant rural gentry, often called the “Mansion People” or the “River Gods,” created a regional specific culture in which their values predominated. A small, interrelated group of families (Ashley, Dwight, Partridge, Porter, Pynchon, Stoddard, and Williams), set standards for rural gentility and refinement in western Massachusetts.  Farther down the Connecticut River toward Hartford, the Williamses joined six other families (Allyns, Chesters, Pitkins, Talcotts, Welles, and Wolcotts) in social dominance. They controlled positions of power (civil, military, and clerical offices) and enhanced that power by maintaining cultural leadership. Distinguished by their aloofness and concern for appearances, these families sought to put social distance between themselves and their neighbors. The River Gods were often the first to own new and specialized forms like sets of chairs and tea wares, many of which you’ll see in the course of the lectures.

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This lecture series will reveal what kinds of ceramics people in the Connecticut River Valley sold, used, saved, mended, and discarded. Sources of documentation for pottery and porcelain in this region of New England include, but are not limited to, probate inventories, merchants’ account books, newspaper advertisements, archaeology, diaries and journals, and objects with histories of ownership. Each form of evidence has its strengths and limitations, but when combined they give a relatively complete picture of the kinds of ceramics that residents acquired and used.  These lectures will focus on small country shopkeepers and rural consumers who dealt with larger merchants in Boston and New York, as well as conducted direct trade with Irish, English, and Chinese merchants in the post-Revolutionary period. The activities of early ceramic collectors including Dr. Irving Lyon and Dr. Albert Hastings Pitkin and 20th-century preservationists such as Henry and Helen Flynt at Historic Deerfield will also be explored.