A joint meeting of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences and members of the Florence Griswold Museum was held at the Museum in Old Lyme on Sunday, October 26, 2003. Before the lecture at 4 p.m. members were free to enjoy the special exhibition "The American River."

  At 4 p.m the Director of the Museum, Dr. Jeffrey Andersen, welcomed the members and said he was delighted to host this joint venture. He introduced the President of the Academy, Dr. Ernest Kohorn, who introduced Howard Lamar, Yale University Professor Emeritus of American History as the speaker of the evening. He said that Professor Lamar personified Yale's motto of Lux et Veritas and cited his many academic achievements, among them being the Dean of Yale College and the 21st President of Yale, the author of many scholarly books and the editor of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences' "Voices of the New Republic."

Professor Lamar was grateful for the brevity of the introduction." Lengthy ones began to sound like an obituary," he said! He first paid tribute to all those who had contributed to the publication of the bicentennial volumes, among them Dr. Franklin Robinson, who passed away unexpectedly last month.

  Professor Lamar's talk was entitled "Peaceable Kingdom or a Land Still Wild?" He painted a picture of Connecticut and its citizenry from 1790 to 1830 as depicted in the Academy's publication "Voices of the New Republic: Connecticut Towns 1800-1832. Volume I: What They Said. Volume II: What We Think". He described how Timothy Dwight and Noah Webster borrowed the idea of a survey, using statistics for the first time to measure the quantum of happiness, from the Reverend Sinclair in Scotland, who had been extremely successful in obtaining responses from his questionnaire. Although Dwight and Webster only received responses from half of the number of towns they surveyed, nevertheless theirs was the first sociological questionnaire in the United States.

  Professor Lamar distilled exquisitely the most descriptive and the most provocative elements of both the reports themselves and the essayists' comments about them. He said that throughout the reports the goal of the pursuit of happiness for all was apparent in every aspect of their lives, be it in agriculture, religion, fishing, relations with Indians and even slavery, a very contentious subject. He suggested that with our technological advances we now have too much power over nature and he described how, in the past, people" conversed" with the environment rather than just inhabiting and using it as they do now. He discussed the disappearance of wild animals since 1830 and their replacement by smaller game, not a particularly bad thing he thought.

  In conclusion Professor Lamar suggested that Connecticut between 1790 and 1830 was not as wild as some had imagined and that the Connecticut of today is not as peaceable as it might be. Several questions followed and it was clear that the audience was stimulated to read the original volumes.

  A convivial reception followed at which members of both institutions conversed over ample food and wine.