In 1825, a petition signed by citizens of Connecticut including
Thomas Robbins,
John Trumbull,
Thomas Day, and
William W. Ellsworth, was presented to the
Connecticut General Assembly, calling for the establishment of a society to preserve historical materials. The General Assembly gave its consent, and the Connecticut Historical Society was established to
collect objects important to the history of the Connecticut, and the United States more generally. The first elected officers were Trumbull, Day, Robbins,
Thomas Church Brownell and Walter Mitchell. Yet despite a flurry of activity, the society became inactive after 1825 and it was not until 1839 when new interest regained. The first official quarters for the Connecticut Historical Society were over a store at 124 Main Street in Hartford. The society's new ideals and direction were spearheaded by
educationalist Henry Barnard, who recommended that the society enroll members from around the state, encouraged a history and
genealogy magazine and retrieved speakers for lectures who could address groups throughout Connecticut. As its collections expanded, the historical society moved into a room in the newly built
Wadsworth Athenaeum in 1843. By 1844, the collections had grown to include 250 bound volumes of newspapers, 6,000 pamphlets, and various collections of manuscripts, coins, portraits and furniture. New officers were elected including
David D. Field. The Historical Society appointed
Thomas Robbins as its first librarian because of his extensive book collection and
antiquarian expertise. Under Robbins's tenure, the new quarters were open six days a week and interpretive tours of objects were given. Some early objects in the collection were a chest of
William Brewster, a tavern sign of General
Israel Putnam and a bloodstained vest worn by Colonel
William Ledyard at the
Battle of Groton Heights. The first woman elected in the organization was Ellen D. Larned in 1870. In 1893, the society hired
Albert Carlos Bates as a full-time librarian and it was under his tenure that membership doubled, the annual income increased five-fold and the collection grew. To accommodate the expanding collection, the Historical Society bought a house on Elizabeth Street, which had previously belonged to the inventor
Curtis Veeder, in the West End of Hartford. The building was altered between the 1950s and 1970s, to accommodate book stacks, exhibition galleries, an auditorium and a reading room. In the early 2000s, the organization hired
Bruce Mau and
Frank Gehry to design a new museum near
Trinity College, but lack of funds prevented the project from happening. From 2003 to 2007, the Connecticut Historical Society operated the
Old State House and created a permanent exhibit "History Is All Around Us". In 2023, the organization updated their name from Connecticut Historical Society to the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History. ==Exhibits==