Emily S.G. Holcombe: Re-inventing Connecticut

Emily Seymour Goodwin Holcombe had a long, active career as a volunteer preservationist and history activist in Connecticut, beginning in the early 1890's and ending with the onset of World War I. She preserved Hartford's Ancient Burying Ground, created the Connecticut Building at the Saint Louis Exhibition, arranged for the furnishings of the Oliver Ellsworth House in Windsor, and helped save the Old State House. This paper places Holcombe's work in the context of other New England women's historic preservation efforts. Some historians such as Kevin D. Murphy and Gail Lee Dubrow have argued that men displaced female preservationists; this paper argues a more complex relationship between the two. While Emily and other Connecticut women worked hand-in-glove with their spouses and male peers to achieve their goals, during this period they were able to retain control over all of the portions of the projects about which they cared most. At the turn-of-the century Emily S.G. Holcombe l