Grating the Nutmeg

Apr 15 2024 192

Grating the Nutmeg Podcast artwork

Connecticut is a small state with big stories. GTN episodes include top-flight historians, compelling first-person stories and new voices in Connecticut history. Executive Producers Mary Donohue, Walt Woodward, and Natalie Belanger look at the people and places that have made a difference in CT history. New episodes every two weeks. A joint production of Connecticut Explored magazine and the CT State Historian Emeritus.

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185. Connecticut Industries Unite for WWII Victory: Pratt, Read & Co Gliders

Apr 15 2024 39 mins

In this episode, we uncover a Connecticut World War II story that features airplanes without engines. Sound crazy? You’ll learn how these engineless gliders helped beat the Nazis. Executive Producer Mary Donohue will also talk to the author of a new book that details the role that over 45 Connecticut companies played in producing the ammunition, weapons and machines that the U

184. The Borinqueneers: Puerto Rico’s Men of the 65th Regiment

Apr 01 2024 30 mins

In this episode, we celebrate and commemorate National Borinqueneers Day coming up on April 13th. It recognizes the bravery, service, and sacrifice of the 65th Infantry Regiment, a United States Army unit that consisted mostly of soldiers from Puerto Rico and the only segregated Latino unit in the United States Army. But the honor and fidelity of the men of the 65th came into

183. Margaret Rudkin of Pepperidge Farm

Mar 15 2024 26 mins

One of the most recognizable food brands in the world got started in a kitchen in Fairfield, Connecticut. In this episode, Natalie Belanger chats with historian Cathryn J. Prince about Margaret Rudkin, the woman who founded Pepperidge Farm. Read Prince's full-length article about Rudkin on the Connecticut Explored website here: https://www.ctexplored.org/pepperidge-farm-healt

182. Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution

Mar 01 2024 50 mins

Are they pirates, profiteers or legitimately authorized extensions of George Washington’s almost non-existent American Navy? We’ll find out with guest historian Eric Jay Dolin, author of Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American RevolutIon. Dolin will underscore an element missing from most maritime histories of the American Revolution: a ragtag fleet of private vessels —

181. Hartford and the Great Migration, 1914-1950

Feb 15 2024 28 mins

181. Hartford and the Great Migration, 1914-1950 In the February 4, 2024 issue of the New York Times, journalist Adam Mahoney describes the Great Migration as a time when millions of Black people left the South to escape segregation, servitude and lynching and went North in search of jobs and stable housing. In this episode, host Mary Donohue will discuss Hartford and the Grea

180. Colonial Connecticut: Sugar, Slavery and Connections to the West Indies

Feb 02 2024 40 mins

Although Connecticut sometimes seems like such a small, isolated place on the map, it was connected to the far-flung, complex, cosmopolitan British empire even in the 17th century. This year on Grating the Nutmeg, we’re going to explore Connecticut’s maritime history with episodes on Colonial Connecticut’s trade with the British colonies of the Caribbean, privateering duri

179. Connecticut’s Benedict Arnold: America’s Most Hated Man

Jan 15 2024 36 mins

179. Connecticut’s Benedict Arnold: America’s Most Hated Man This is our first new episode for 2024 and we’ve got some big news! Thanks to you-our listeners-we had 30,106 downloads in 2023! That’s our best year ever! We have brand new Facebook and Instagram pages under Grating the Nutmeg-please follow us and you’ll get behind the scenes photos, sneak peeks of new conte

178. Mark Twain, Spiritualism and Ghost Stories

Dec 01 2023 39 mins

Did you ever think the universe was trying to tell you something? I just finished reading Anderson Cooper’s book on the Vanderbilt family. In it, he describes family patriarch Commodore Vanderbilt’s interest in Spiritualism and clairvoyance. Cooper writes “Evidence suggests that the Commodore had begun attending seances as early as 1864, but given the mainstreaming of Sp

177. Murder on Prospect Street

Nov 15 2023 39 mins

In this episode of Grating the Nutmeg, Natalie Belanger sits down with acclaimed crime writer M. William Phelps to get to the bottom of a notorious early 20th century Connecticut murder story. In the 1910s, Amy Archer Gilligan operated an innovative business in Windsor: a convalescent home for the ill and elderly. Her benevolent facade, however, hid a deadly purpose: a business pl

176. Witchcraft Uncovered: New Discoveries and Exonerations

Nov 01 2023 33 mins

Witchcraft accusations began in Connecticut in May, 1647, with the trial and execution of Alice Young of Windsor, 45 years before the better-known witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Connecticut had witchcraft accusation outbreaks in the early 1660s in Hartford and again in Fairfield in 1692, with criminal trials ending in 1697. In colonial Connecticut, dozens of women, and some