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Frances Manwaring Caulkins Display

May 12, 2009
Press Release, Beryl Fishbone, Program Coordinator

BRIDGES staff, director, Katelyn Wagner, Curriculum Coordinator, Suzanne Roy, of the Norwich Public Schools BRIDGES Program, and 3rd to 5th grade participants in the afterschool program from Uncas and Moriarty schools were among the first to examine the autograph book kept by Frances Manwaring Caulkins and an album of pressed "Sea-Mosses" that was presented to Ms. Caulkins by her two friends CB & ME Webster in 1860.

The two books will remain on display on the desk of FM Caulkins at the Leffingwell House Museum, 348 Washington Street, Norwich, CT throughout the Norwich 350^th Anniversary Celebration. The museum is open to the public on Saturday afternoons through October and other times by appointment.

The fourth and fifth graders especially liked seeing the calling cards of Tsow Chaoong of Canton and Ms. Caulkins written in Chinese. Some of the students plan on trying their hand at pressing and printing small bits of inked seaweed on paper during the summer.

Ms. Caulkins (1795-1869) was a prolific writer centering literary attention on two radically different areas of concern: the religious education of young people and local history.

Caulkins is well known for writing The History of Norwich, Connecticut, from Its Settlement in 1660 to January, 1845. A second, corrected and revised edition by the author carried the history to 1866 and The History of New London, Connecticut (1852), with a second edition continuing to 1860.

Photo credit Mike Przygoda