Awakenings and Revolutions: The Harts, Saybrook, and the New Nation

From the high seas to the town square, the story of a New England family navigating revolution, economic expansion, and nation building.Awakenings and Revolutions: The Harts, Saybrook, and the New Nation is a new look at the residents of the Old Saybrook Historical Society’s Gen. William Hart House and the Hart family of Saybrook, Connecticut (as the town was called until 1856). Moving between the Connecticut River estuary, Hartford, New London, Boston, New York, and as far as Ohio and the West Indies, the story reveals the Harts’ surprising connections to major moments of Connecticut’s and our nation’s early history.As we celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary, Awakenings and Revolutions illustrates the ways families and towns were swept up in the great experiment in democracy and nation building that transformed us from British subjects to American citizens.Read about the Great Awakening; slavery in the north; the American Revolution and privateering; civic engagement in a colonial town; early banking and finance; the West Indies trade and how that trade was impacted by the Quasi-War with France and the Haitian Revolution; the birth of the two-party political system in America and the overthrow of Connecticut’s Standing Order; land speculation in the Connecticut Western Reserve (now Ohio); and more.“A long lasting and valuable addition to the history of Old Saybrook and beyond!”— Tedd Levy, former educator, author, and local historian“Old Saybrook occupies a singular place in Connecticut history—from its founding in 1635 at the mouth of New England's longest river to its strategic, economic, and political importance in the colonial and early national periods. Normen tells this larger story through the lens of the remarkable Hart family, whose lives intersected with many of the defining—and difficult—moments in Connecticut and United States history. Meticulous genealogical and archival research reveals the intricacies of the Harts' private and public relationships, underscoring what it meant to be American with each new generation.”— Katherine Hermes, Publisher, Connecticut Explored, the magazine of Connecticut history“Awakenings and Revolutions tells the story of 230 years of Saybrook history through the lives of five generations of one of early Connecticut’s leading families. With conciseness and clarity joined to exhaustive research, Normen has written the kind of work historians have called for for a generation, but rarely produced: a history that, while detailing the lives of generations of Harts who ranked among Saybrook's, Connecticut's, and at times the nation’s important leading men, pays equally close attention to the women and the enslaved persons whose overlooked presence helped make that leadership possible. Whatever your primary historical interest, or just looking for a good history read, Normen has written this for you."— Walter Woodward, Emeritus Connecticut State Historian Read more