Archives: Mattatuck Museum

This is an artificial collection created by the Mattatuck Museum as collection for small donation of photographs having to do with Waterbury. The collection is arranged by subject. Photographs date from circa 1847-circa 2005 in various sizes and format. The collection's strengths include documentati...

This collection is composed of various donations of early photography in Waterbury. It includes: daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes.

Plume and Atwood Manufacturing Company was organized in 1869 by Israel Holmes, John C. Booth, Lewis J. Atwood, David S. Plume, Aaron Thomas, George W. Welton, Burr Tucker, and others. The company made sheet brass, wire, lamp parts, rivets, fasteners, other small brass goods. Main office was in Water...

Between 1812 and 1849, the Waterbury Button Company was a division of the Benedict and Burnham Manufacturing Company. In 1849, the Benedict and Burnham established its button making division as a separate company, capitalized at thirty thousand dollars. The stock in the newly formed Waterbury Button...

The Great Brook Reservoir Association was formed in 1856 in order to share the expense of building and maintaining a dam and reservoir in Great Brook at Buck’s Hill. Original Members included Waterbury Knitting Co., Waterbury Manufacturing Company, W. R. Hitchcock and Co., William Perkins, and L....

The Elton family have been members of the Waterbury community since the mid-1700s and were farmers, businessmen, politicians, and medical doctors. A brief history of those included in these papers is as follows. John Elton (circa 1855-1800) was a Watertown doctor. Samuel Elton (1780 –1858) was...

The Kingsbury family was a significant family who were involved in legal, industrial, commercial, and financial endeavors in nineteenth century Waterbury. Of special interest are the images and remarks by the Kingsbury family of several black women who were employed or indentured to the Kingsbury fa...

George L. Lilley was born in Oxford, Massachusetts on August 3, 1859. He attended Worchester High School, and Worchester Technical Institute. In 1881 he moved to Waterbury, CT to pursue a business opportunity in real estate. Lilley served in the State House of Representatives from 1901-1903. Running...

Elizur Prichard (1804-1860), Father to Sarah and Katherine. He was a manufacturer of buttons, and worked with the American Suspender Company based out of New Haven. After retirement, he purchased Charles Island and ran a resort house until the Civil War. Betsey J. Prichard (1806- ) Mother to Sara...

The Medical and Scientific Collection contains documents compiled by the Mattatuck Museum. The documents were collected over a period of years and cover the dates between 1772-1938 and undated. The Medical and Scientific Collection contain various medical journals and personal documents regarding...

This collection is an artificial collection comprised of various small donations relating to the local schools and education from 1709-1957.

Waterbury began as the Mattatuck Plantation, a land grant given to settlers from Farmington, Connecticut in 1676. In addition to Waterbury, the Mattatuck Plantation included the modern-day Connecticut towns of Naugatuck, Middlebury, Watertown and Thomaston, and portions of Wolcott, Plymouth, Oxford ...

George Townsend lived in Waterbury, CT during the mid-1800s. He was born in Connecticut around 1828 and died in 1868, according to obituaries and ancestry records. He wrote about daily life in his diaries.

The Brass Worker’s History Project was organized in the early 1980s by four people: Janet Stackhouse, Jerry Lombardi, Jeremy Brecher and Hank Murray. The group was influenced by a shared interest in public history: a push away from researching and writing about “the greats” of history, and an invest...

Phillip Kappel was born on February 10, 1901, in Hartford, Connecticut. As a child he was introduced to art through visits to the Wadsworth Museum and a local print shop. His father dissuaded him from perusing an artistic career out of fear that he would not become financially successful. To try and...

The Riverside Cemetery is a historic landmark located in Waterbury, Connecticut. Riverside was designed by Waterbury architect, Robert Wakeman Hill. Hill designed the cemetery in the "natural" style that was popularized in English garden design and made popular in the United States during the 19th c...

John W. Hill was born in Straitsville, Connecticut on April 13, 1834. He later moved to Waterbury, Ct with his family years later. Hill was a corporal in Company E of the Sixth Connecticut Volunteer Infantry during 1861. He stayed with the infantry until 1862, being discharged for disability. Howeve...

Raymond Joseph Donnelly was a World War II veteran and lifelong Waterbury resident. He was born on May 31, 1921 and passed away on November 2, 2013 at St. Mary's Hospital. Donnelly served in the US Army from 1942-1946. After the war, Donnelly returned to Waterbury and worked at the American Brass Co...

Elsie was born on November 8, 1894 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her parents were Hilma Flink and Karl E. Flink and genealogy records indicate that Hilma and Karl immigrated from London to the United States, though they were originally from Sweden. Hilma died when Elsie was a small child, and she and...

The myth of Chief Two Moon is known better than facts about his life and business. 1920 and 1930 census records show that Chief Two Moon Meridas was living in Waterbury, Connecticut with his wife Helen [Nugent] Meridas. He listed himself as being an "herbalist", that his race was "Indian" meaning Na...

In 1968 the State Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities held public hearings in Waterbury. The commission was concerned with four areas: Housing, Education, Employment, and Police-Community Relations. The hearings provided a forum for anyone who lived in Waterbury to voice concerns over these...

Between 1995 and 2001 the Mattatuck Museum conducted 60 oral history interviews with African American citizens in Waterbury. The project targeted elderly African Americans in order to obtain information about the early to mid twentieth century life in Waterbury. In addition to oral history interview...

The Jewish Oral History Project was a community-driven project begun by members of Beth El synagogue and the Jewish History Project Committee in the early 2000s. There were a total of 98 interviews conducted, with 133 individuals providing information on their family and their life in Waterbury. The...

Kay Sage was born on June 25, 1898 near Albany, New York to Henry Manning Sage and Anna Wheeler Ward Sage. In 1907 her parents separated and she spent time with her mother traveling abroad to Italy, France, Egypt, and the UK. In the early 1920s she began to study art, first in Washington DC and then...

Yves Tanguy was born in Paris in 1900. He spent summers in his family's home in Brittany and the landscape of his youth were influential on his later surrealist artworks. In 1920 Tanguy was drafted into service for the French army. During his service he met and befriended the poet Jacques Prevert. P...

Ernest David Roth was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1879. He immigrated to the United States with his family in 1884 at the age of five and lived in New York City. As a child in New York, Roth worked in a print shop, which sparked his interest in printmaking. In New York City he studied at the Natio...

Reymond's Baking Company was founded in 1910 by Adolph and his brother Albert. At the beginning the only employees of the company were the Reymond brothers. The two worked 18-hour days, with Albert baking the bread in a single oven that produced 150 loaves a day and Adolph delivering the bread with ...

The Marjorie Robinson papers is largely composed of genealogy records compiled by Marjorie Robinson of the Robinson Family lineage. It also includes recorded genealogy on the Louisa May Alcott family. The collection also contains parish announcements from the First Methodist Church in Waterbury, as ...

Helen (Boice) Leary was born in 1901 and was a Waterbury resident her entire life. Her grandparents immigrated in the 1870's from Ireland, they bought a house in the North End and worked in one of the many factories in Waterbury. Leory's father and mother stayed in the North End, her father also got...

The Shoe Hardware Company was a shoe manufacturing company that produced out of Naugatuck, Ct. The company produced buckles and fasteners. It is believed that in 1892 it along with nine other Naugatuck companies consolidated to become the United States Rubber Company. One of the nine companies in...

Ruth (Upson) Currie was born in Waterbury Connecticut in 1901. She studied business at Post Jr. College in Waterbury and graduated in 1921. Currie worked as a bookkeeper and stenographer for Blake & Johnson in Waterbury before her retirement in 1968. Currie was a member of the daughters of the Ameri...

In 1882 Henry Morrow, the editor and publisher of the newspaper The Republican wrote an editorial headlined "Waterbury Pressing Needs A Hospital," a year later Waterbury Hospital was granted a charter of incorporation and fundraising efforts for equipment began. In 1890 the hospital opened in the Wi...

Minnie Rogers Steele took drawing lessons as a child at St. Margaret's School in Waterbury, CT and later became influential as an art teacher in Waterbury. In 1881 she began her art studies in New York City at the Art Students League under Charles Melville Dewey. She also studied in Philadelphia at ...

Alexandra Darrow was a photographer who lived in Woodbury Connecticut in the mid-1900s. She and her father, Judson Darrow, ran a successful photography studio and specialized in photographing artist's work. Alexandra Darrow also taught art at Saint Margaret's School in Waterbury.

Rosalind Russell was born in Waterbury, Ct on June 4th in 1907. Russell's father was an attorney, and her mother was a teacher. The Russell's had seven children, Rosalind being the fourth. They lived on Country Club Road. Russell attended Catholic schools, attending Rosemont College in Rosemont, Pen...

The Waterbury Women's Civic League was founded on April 27, 1942 by Corinne Thomas as a civic club for African American women. Other founding members included Virginia Goodson, Sara Keyes, Goldie Vicks, etc. Initially the club focused on purchasing war bonds, collecting materials for donation relate...

In 1923 a group of people met at Miss Alice Kingsbury's home on Prospect Street to discuss a report on the Waterbury African American population compiled by Charles Johnson. As a result of this study, an Interdenominational committee and Board of Directors made up of both African American and White ...