Minta Judd

This Musings from Main is a follow-up to last week's e-mail about the Hartford County Temporary Home. It again comes courtesy of Beverly Titus, a volunteer at the East Windsor Historical Society. As you already know from last week, Beverly has been working on this research project for the last couple of years. This Musing features the work of historical fiction that she wrote about one of the thirty-three children who are buried in Springdale Cemetery in Warehouse Point, Minta Judd.

The Minta Judd Story

As Beverly Titus was researching her book Remembrance, she felt drawn to one of the children she was researching, a little girl known as Minta Judd. This special connection drove Beverly to dig deeper into little Minta's background, and what emerged from that investigation was the Minta Judd Story, a work of historical fiction to further explore what the possible circumstances of her short life may have been.

By definition historical fiction is an imaginative reconstruction of historical events and people. It allows the writer to take the story's general framework from a real place (Greater Hartford) and recognizable time in history (the late 19th century), and allows them a broad license to basically, bring the past to life through a combination of verifiable, often well known facts and the author's imagination.

Of all of the children Beverly researched for Remembrance, Minta arguably had the most  information available about her. In addition to birth and death records, there was extensive press coverage at the time about her pitiful plight, apparent rescue, and subsequent death. Beverly weaves these verifiable facts with believable, fictional details and familiar settings, and brings to life the story of how an abandoned and abused child in the late 1800s could find themselves in the County Home.

The Minta Judd Story, includes an interesting "Appendix: The Stories Behind the Stories" in which Beverly walks the reader through which details are facts and which are fiction. She explains her use of cultural touchstones such as the inclusion of famed entertainer Sophie Tucker, a real person, who began her career in Hartford singing as a child about the same time that Minta was born. She also includes a list of the primary resources she explored. These provided Beverly with the additional details she needed to bring Minta's story to life. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

I received several emails responding to last week's Musing indicating that people were interested in attending a program by Beverly about her work. I am happy to announce that we have a date! Beverly will come to Wood Memorial Library & Museum on Sunday, June 25, 2023 at 2pm, and speak about her experiences researching this project. The program will follow the public launch of our "New" Research Library in celebration of CT Open House Day, Saturday, June 10, 2023, from 1pm to 4pm. We hope to see you there.