Wesleyan Research on Middletown
The Wesleyan Eco-Map is a new project to create user-friendly maps of campus based on energy consumption data that will encourage good environmental citizenship in the Wesleyan community. The site is still a prototype, but its creators, led by Professor Mary Alice Haddad of the Government department, hope to have more sophisticated versions soon. You … Read more
“Neglected, Vagrant, and Viciously Inclined: The Girls of the Connecticut Industrial School, 1867-1917” is an honors thesis in American Studies by Sarah A. Leavitt, advised by Professor Patricia Hill. The paper is an “account of the advocates and inmates of the Connecticut Industrial School for Girls.” See more details and download the full text from: … Read more
On October 22, 1936, accompanied by his wife Eleanor, who ordinarily shunned such trips, Franklin Roosevelt rode through Middletown’s Sicilian neighborhood; passed St. John’s Church, historic sanctuary of the Irish; slowed momentarily at St. Aloysius’ Hall, a temperance hall temporarily turned into headquarters for the Remington Rand machinists; and continued up flag-draped Main Street, accompanied … Read more
The spring flood was only the start of Middletown’s 1936 calamities. No sooner had East Side residents returned to their residences, thrown out spoiled belongings, and resumed work than the Remington Rand Corporation forced its 1,350 Middletown machinists to strike. —”Middletown’s Barons and the End of the WASP Ascendancy,” an unpublished essay by Ron Schatz
Measured by proportion to population, Middletown was hit harder by this flood than any other city in Connecticut. Some of the city’s poorest residents refused to leave their quarters despite the disaster. Instead, like many of the impoverished residents of New Orleans in the 2005 Katrina flood, they chose to carry their belongings to the … Read more
Professor Sarah Croucher’s Middletown Materials project features research undertaken by students from 2010 onwards on the artifacts recovered from excavations that have taken place in Middletown Connecticut. Excavations took place in the 1970s in advance of redevelopment work of downtown Middletown. Several sites were excavated around the South End of Main Street. Professor Croucher will … Read more
Arielle Berrick, Wesleyan University Rachel Miller-Howard, Wesleyan University Abstract Bill Barrows is a professional antiques dealer. He was born and raised in Portland, CT, where he resides today….This recording captures the stories of a longstanding Portland resident. Bill describes his antiques business, his childhood, his relationship to the quarries, his family history, and Middletown and … Read more
Oral Histories and the Portland Brownstone Quarries was a course offered by Professor Indira Karamcheti at Wesleyan University in Fall 2009. The students in the course researched the history of the Portland, Connecticut brownstone quarries and interviewed residents and others about their memories and thoughts on the historic quarries. You can visit the main series … Read more
The Biodiversity Database provides species information, photographs, resources, as well as geographic information about Middletown … [and] it is powered by submissions from the Middletown community…. This database includes dates, specific geographic location, and an entry for every single reported sighting of a species, as well as observer information, abundance data, and anything else we … Read more
During the spring semester of 2008, professor Gina Ulysse offered Anthropology 232 — Alter(ed)native Approaches: Middletown Lives, a service learning course that included a social study of people living in the immediate vicinity of the North End landfill. Students in the course (Eric Bissell, Lesley Chapman, Zev Frank, and Amanda Herrera) made this video tour … Read more
