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Hartford (Conn.) --- Connecticut --- Hartford --- City of Hartford (Conn.) --- Newtown (Hartford County, Conn.) --- Suckiag (Conn.)

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Who was Ann Plato? Apart from circumstantial evidence, there's little information about the author of Essays; Including Biographies and Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Poetry, published in 1841. Plato lived in a milieu of colored Hartford, Connecticut, in the early nineteenth century. Although long believed to have been African American herself, she may also, Ron Welburn argues, have been American Indian, like the father in her poem "The Natives of America." Combining literary criticism, ethnohistory, and social history, Welburn uses Plato as an example of how Indians in the Long Island Sound region adapted and prevailed despite the contemporary rhetoric of Indian disappearance. This study seeks to raise Plato's profile as an author as well as to highlight the dynamics of Indian resistance and isolation that have contributed to her enigmatic status as a literary figure.

African American women educators. --- African American women authors. --- Afro-American women educators --- Women educators, African American --- Women educators --- Afro-American women authors --- Women authors, African American --- Women authors, American --- Plato, Ann --- Criticism and interpretation. --- Hartford (Conn.) --- Hartford --- City of Hartford (Conn.) --- Newtown (Hartford County, Conn.) --- Suckiag (Conn.) --- Intellectual life.

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Winner of the 2017 Homer D. Babbidge Jr. Award presented by the Association for the Study of Connecticut HistoryBased on a treasure trove of more than two hundred personal letters written in the 1860s, Hopes and Expectations tells the story of three young African Americans in the North. Living on Maryland's eastern shore, schoolteacher Rebecca Primus sent "home weeklies" to her parents in Hartford and also corresponded with friend Addie Brown, a domestic worker back home. Addie wrote voluminously to Rebecca, lamenting their separation and describing her struggle to achieve a semblance of security and stability. Around the same time, Rebecca's brother, Nelson, began writing home about his new life in Boston, as he set out to make a name and a career for himself as an artist. The letters describe their daily lives and touch on race, class, gender, religion, and politics, offering rare entry into individual black lives at that time.Through extensive archival research, Barbara J. Beeching also shows how the story of the Primus family intersects with changes over time in Hartford's black community and the country. Newspapers and census tracts, as well as probate, land, court, and vital records help her trace an arc of local black fortunes between 1830 and 1880. Seeking full equality, blacks sought refinement and respectability through home ownership, literacy, and social gains. One of the many paradoxes Beeching uncovers is that just as the Civil War was tearing the nation apart, a recognizable black middle class was emerging in Hartford. It is a story of individuals, family, and community, of expectation and disappointment, loss and endurance, change and continuity.

African Americans --- Middle class --- Community life --- Afro-Americans --- Black Americans --- Colored people (United States) --- Negroes --- Africans --- Ethnology --- Blacks --- Associations, institutions, etc. --- Human ecology --- Bourgeoisie --- Commons (Social order) --- Middle classes --- Social classes --- Social conditions. --- Economic conditions. --- History. --- Social conditions --- Primus, Nelson, --- Primus, Rebecca, --- Brown, Addie. --- Hartford (Conn.) --- Hartford --- City of Hartford (Conn.) --- Newtown (Hartford County, Conn.) --- Suckiag (Conn.) --- Race relations. --- Black people