Many individuals and communities are interested to learn who the first settlers were in their current home or ancestral area. This can be for many reasons — to establish family lines, track property history or to understand cultural diffusion and the local historical heritage, to name just a few.
February 13, 2015 was the 350th anniversary of the signing of the Articles of Agreement in 1665 between representatives of the plantation area called East Saybrook on the east side of the Connecticut River from the parent Colony of Saybrook on the west side to amicably separate from each other. Two years later in 1667,…
The recent news of Ebola and measles epidemics raises the question of whether a quarantine has ever been implemented in Lyme to prevent the spread of contagious disease through isolation or confinement of contagious individuals. The answer is “Yes”. There has been no shortage of contagious disease in the history of Lyme during the colonial…
In 1748/49 six proprietors (landowners) of Lyme, Connecticut petitioned the New London County Court for permission to create a “common field”, based on the laws and practice of the Colony, to allow townspeople to share in its benefits, in this case good meadowland at the edge of the Connecticut River for salt hay and animal grazing.The documents…
The Lyme Grange was established in 1896 as a chapter of the national Grange. Members took turns presenting a talk or short program on a topic of their own interest or current issues at the state or national level that had bearing on rural life. Grange member J. R. Warren wrote and read the following piece at…
The Lyme Local History Archives lost our good friend, Doris “Doad” Reynolds Jewett, who died December 10, 2013 at 100 years old. She was a volunteer in the Archives for several years until just four years ago. She would walk over from the home she grew up in on Hamburg Cove to the Lyme Public Hall, always…
In the years between 1880 and 1930, there was a big change in Lyme, CT’s population profile. Overall, the population declined by almost one-half. Even more remarkably, the number of households headed by farmers, dropped by almost 70%. Connecticut as a whole at the end of the 19th century was experiencing strong growth in the cities, manufacturing, the railroads, and improved…
Long before a Lyme Public Library was established in 1914, town residents in the 18th and 19th centuries organized a number of ways to lend and borrow books. A surprise? Not really. Although there were books in print, they were not generally accessible or affordable to the general population. It was the case then, just as now,…
One of the treasures of the Lyme Public Hall’s archives is the ledger recording the meetings of the proprietors of the Ely Meadow— the long, narrow strip of land south of Ely’s Ferry that is elevated enough for wild grasses to grow between the river bank and the Lord Cove marshes. From 1748 until
Changes in Architectural Styles Within the last twenty-five years there have been several efforts to survey and document Lyme’s historic houses. In 1976 the Lyme Bicentennial Commission produced a map showing the standing pre-Revolutionary period houses. In 1980 a survey was initiated by the Connecticut Historical Commission which documented structure, age, historical and architectural significance…