Category Archives: Litchfield’s History

Blog posts about Litchfield’s history, from town settlement in 1719 through to modern day Litchfield.

Litchfield School Records

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By Cecelia Hooper, Intern

The recent merging of Litchfield Public Schools and Region 6 into Region 20 has given the Litchfield Historical Society the opportunity to ensure the old district’s memory will be preserved for future generations. A generous donation by the new region of office records, sports paraphernalia, and other academic items of no longer existing schools reveal the workings of an older scholastic administration and give insight into the lives of students over the past century.

Trophies on display in Liggett Gallery, 2025-11-1-5

Donated student handbooks from Litchfield High School dating from the 1964-65 school year up to 1989-90 included school policies, club descriptions, possible awards, sport schedules, and the school song. Information was added and removed over the years, such as course descriptions and Title IX. Trophies show wins in baseball, basketball, and tennis, along with the names of the winning team. The trophies and sports jerseys are currently on display in the Liggett Gallery.

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Eric Hatch Portrait

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By Cecelia Hooper, Intern

The museum recently acquired a portrait of the acclaimed author Eric Stowe Hatch (1902-1973) through the generous donation of his son, Eric K. Hatch. This portrait will be on view Litchfield History Museum’s Helga J. Ingraham Memorial Library (7 South Street, Litchfield). Depicting Hatch at seven years old, the painting was completed around 1909 and painted either at his parents’ house on Park Avenue in New York City, or at their secondary residence in Cedarhurst, Long Island.

Oil Painting–Eric Stowe Hatch (1902-1973) by John Wycliffe Lowes Forster, circa 1909; Litchfield Historical Society, 2025-13-1

The artist of the piece was John Wycliffe Lowes Forster (1850-1938), a well-known portrait painter from Canada. He began his apprenticeship at nineteen, and a decade later studied for three years in Paris. A member of the Ontario Society of Artists and the Royal Canadian Academy, his body of work includes multiple prominent subjects, including the Emperor and Empress of Japan in 1920. The museum holds four other of his paintings.

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Miss Jones Letter

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1847 Litchfield CT stampless folded letter red CDS and 5 rate [H.3508] - Picture 1 of 3

Letter, Julia Henrietta Jones to Laura Boardman Lane, March 31, 1847

As noted before, we have alerts set up for eBay and various auction sites to notify staff when Litchfield-related items and collections appear. A few weeks ago, I added this item to my watchlist on eBay. Individual letters are often bought and sold by stamp collectors who care little about the contents as was the case with this. Although I had requested an image of the contents, the seller did not comply. Instead, I received an offer to buy the letter for $8.49. Noting that it had a return option, I decided to take a chance- the name Laura Lane was familiar from my work on the Boardman papers, and the 1841 made me wonder whether the author was a former Litchfield Female Academy Student.

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Detective Work in the Archives

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Group photo of Sons of Veterans of the United States of America C. O. Belden Camp #31 Litchfield, about 1881


Project Archivist Leith Johnson is working on creating and enhancing descriptive records for the Litchfield Historical Society Photograph Collection funded by a Connecticut Humanities SHARP grant. He contributed the piece below about this photograph, which had no identifying information written on it or with it, and required some investigation.

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Halley’s Comet Time Capsule

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Do you remember that thirty five years ago the second graders at Litchfield Center School buried a time capsule on the Litchfield Green? Maybe you were not born yet. As a once in every seventy-five years event, Halley’s Comet is typically a pretty big deal. Mark Twain even said he came in with Halley’s Comet and would go out with it- he predicted correctly.

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