Hannah Hayden and her family moved from Windsor to Hartwick, New York in 1806. Her letters back home reveal a willful woman grappling with her new identity in the frontier. Her textile work and the burdens of caring for her brood of children and employees usually took center stage in her letters, while her focus on and longing for material goods and economic success remained subtle yet sharply detailed motifs.
In 1883, William F. Garvin left his home and family in Windsor and headed to Cheyenne, Wyoming, a young and rapidly growing frontier town. He faithfully wrote each week to his younger brother John. 130 years later, William’s grandniece Bev Garvan donated this collection of 300 letters to the Society. She has transcribed dozens of excerpts to illustrate some of the differences between life in Windsor and in the West.
Scrapbooks, what to do with them! For a historical society, scrapbooks are a particularly difficult format to preserve. Generally, they are comprised of a mixture of types of cherished mementos, which each have different long-term preservation needs.
The Kibbe/Sipple Correspondence Collection consists of 26 letters written by Windsor resident Fred S. Kibbe to Mrs. Jessie Taylor Sipple during his World War I service in the US Army as part of the American [...]