The Life of Harriet Allyn

Thursday, April 12, 2018
Waterford Public Library

6:15 p.m.           Refreshments
6:45 p.m.           Business Meeting
7:00 p.m.           Program

Join us this month to hear New London Historian Sally Ryan tell us about the life of Harriet Allyn.  Harriet Upson Allyn was born on March 2, 1840. In 1889, Harriet Upson Allyn married a cousin, James Allyn, a successful Montville farmer and member of the Connecticut State Legislature. Harriet’s older brother John passed away in 1893, at which point Harriet asked her widowed sister-in-law, Lucretia to join her and live at the 613 Williams Street residence. Harriet’s marriage to James produced no children and James passed away in March 1898. Until Harriet’s health began to decline in the 1920s, she and Lucretia would travel broadly frequently vacationing in New York and Florida.

Harriet continued to retain ownership of the house until her death in 1927. The Deshon-Allyn House and its contents were left to Lucretia, but not for long. At the time of Lucretia’s death in 1931, all of the inheritance Lucretia retained from Harriet was entrusted to Connecticut College for Women. The house was then purchased by the Hartford-Connecticut Trust Company for the person use and residence of the museum’s first director, Winslow Ames and his wife, Anna.

Sally Ryan is the historian for the Town of New London. Previously she was a fourth grade teacher in New London for 30 years. She became town historian in the 1980’s and since then has taught local history at New London Adult and Continuing Education and currently teaches it at the Public Library of New London both in the spring and the fall. In her retirement Sally has been a docent at the Hempstead House and Lyman Allyn Art Museum.