Connecticut Disasters

Lifelong Connecticut resident Ellsworth S. Grant has been a manufacturer, mayor of West Hartford (1969–1973), personnel director, educational film producer, president of the Connecticut Historical Society, and brother-in-law to the legendary Katharine Hepburn. Born in Wethersfield, he attended Kingswood-Oxford School in West Hartford and graduated from Harvard in 1939. The son of the president of Allen Manufacturer Company (which made various kinds of fasteners, including the “Allen wrench”), Ellsworth went into a career in manufacturing. In his second career as a writer, much of his work has covered Connecticut’s history of manufacturing, such as in The Colt Armory. Two of his best-known books are Yankee Dreamers and Doers, published by Pequot Press in 1974, and The Miracle of Connecticut, the second edition of which was published by Connecticut Historical Society and Fenwick Productions. In collaboration with his first wife, Marion Hepburn, he wrote The City of Hartford (1986), a pictorial history. Before Connecticut Disasters, his most recent book was his 2004 autobiography A Connecticut Journey (Wood Pond Press). He is a lifelong sailing enthusiast on the Long Island Sound and a contributor to various magazines, including American Heritage, Northeast, Hartford, and Cruising World.

• (1) Preface (2) The Burning of New London, 1871 (3) The Moodus Earthquake, 1791 (4) The Raid on Essex, 1814 (5) Deadly Steamboats, 1833 and 1840 (6) The Ill-Fated Farmington Canal, 1835 (7) The Amistad Affair, 1839 (8) The Norwalk Train Wreck, 1853 (9) The Fales & Gray Explosion (10) The Colt Armory Fire, 1864 (11) The Tariffville Bridge Wreck, 1878 (12) The Great Blizzard, 1888 (13) The Park Central Explosion, 1889 (14) The Influenza Epidemic, 1918-1919 (15) The Great Flood, 1936 (16) The Great Hurricane, 1938 (17) The Hartford Circus Fire, 1944 (18) Hurricanes Connie and Diane, 1955 (19) The Cathedral Fire, 1956 (20) The Hartford Hospital Fire, 1961 (21) Connecticut River Pollution, 1965 (22) Buildings Collapse, 1978 and 1987 (23) Highway Tragedies, 1983 and 2005 (24) Bibliography (25) About the Author