Volume 12 Issue 2-3 Summer-Fall 2005

Nineteeth-Century Memorials in Stained Glass

The radiant rays of the morning sun flowed through the stained glass windows, illuminating images of saints and symbols of the Roman Catholic Faith. Beneath these beautiful figures, my eyes rested on the names of the forgotten souls who donated the windows or who were memorialized by others’ gifts. Clergy and parishioners gave the window to beautify St. Bernard’s Catholic Church, their beloved church on a hill in the village of Tariffville, a section of Simsbury, Connecticut. All of the Gift Givers were Irish-Quinn, Walsh, Shea, Connelly, Condon, Carroll, Winters, Starrs, Convey, Baldwin, Wall and Penders. Their names recalled my own Irish roots and stirred in me a genealogist’s desire to find out more about them.

Volume 12 Issue 1, Spring 2005

Pioneer in the Automobile Business in the Farmington Valley

Mary Pringle Mitchell has written this account of her father’s arrival in this country almost a century ago and the life he made for himself and his family.

My father, Robert Pringle, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1890 , the son of Mark and Mary Engle Pringle. He was the first in his family to immigrate to the United States. To come to another country with no contacts took a lot of courage and faith in yourself and your future. He came to this country on the S.S. Sicilian in 1914 and eventually settled in Simsbury in 1916. He arrived with a lot of hope, some clothes in his trunk and very little money in his pocket.

Volume 11 Issue 3-4, Fall-Winter 2004-05

Ephraim Howard was One of the Investors in Simsbury’s First Mills

Mr. John Warham of Devon County, England was one of two Puritan ministers selected to be part of a company of about 140 prospective settlers who sailed for New England in May 1630 aboard the ship Mary and John. Mr. Roger Ludlow, a lawyer from Wiltshire with Puritan sentiments, had bought and commissioned the ship; most of it’s passengers came from the West Country Counties of Devon, Somerset and Dorset. They embarked about a month before the 11 ships known as the Winthrop Fleet began their Atlantic transit.

Volume 11 Issues 1-2 Spring-Summer 2004

With Sketches Involving Some of His Customers

Simeon Higley was eighteen in December 1769 when he began keeping his own account book, one of the rites of passage for many young men in colonial America. Before that, his labor was undoubtedly folded into the business dealings recorded in a now missing account book kept by his father Captain Joseph Higley. Simeon’s first customer, and the only one between December 1769 and December 1774, was Ozias Pettibone. Pettibone, who had extensive land holdings in Simsbury, had in October 1764 purchased a house, home lot and meadows that abutted Joseph Higley’s property on three sides and other acreage in “Higley’s Plain.”