Volume 13 Issue 3 Fall 2006

The Original Trustees Part 1

During the Winter of 1872 and 1873, there was organized among the middle aged and the young people of this village a social and literary club. This society, prompted by it’s needs, agitated the matter of a public library. There had existed for some years an organization known as the “Simsbury Book Club”…

Volume 13 Issue 1-2 Spring-Summer 2006

A Predecessor of the Simsbury Free Library

Libraries did not begin with the idea that books would circulate. In ancient and medieval times a library’s major function was to preserve scarce texts for the use of scholars; the fabled Egyptian library at Alexandria and the collection in the monasteries of Europe are well-known examples of this type. An engraving done in 1600 clearly shows that the books in the library at the University of Leyden were chained to the shelves. Nearly two hundred years later when future Connecticut educator Henry Barnard entered Yale College he found its library was not open to underclassmen and that the only way he could gain the access he wanted to book was to join the Linonian, a debating society, and to serve unpaid as an assistant to its librarian.

Volume 12 Issue 4 Winter 2005-06

Finding Family Places in Baden and Bavaria, Germany

With my trip to Germany in September 2005, I feel like I have completed the dream of every genealogist. I have walked in the villages, found many of the original homes still standing, entered the churches and toured some of the cemeteries of all of my immediate ancestors. Well, actually, all but one, and I’ll get back to that later.

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.