David J. Drury, a Connecticut journalist and lifelong student of history, will discuss his book, “Hartford in World War I,” on Thursday, Jan. 7 to launch the sixth season of the Tolland Public Library Foundation’s popular Eaton-Dimock-King Authors Series.
In the book, published last month by Arcadia Publishing and The History Press, Drury traces how Connecticut answered the call to arms when Congress declared war in April 1917. Drury, of Rocky Hill, writes that Hartford hosted major rallies and recruitment drives and that local manufacturers such as Colt’s Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company worked around the clock to meet the demand for war materiel and goods.
The book is based on a vast store of historical materials at the Connecticut State Library and other institutions that detail Connecticut’s role in the Great War.
Drury is a graduate of the University of Virginia who also did graduate study in modern European history at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. A journalist since 1978, Drury worked as a staff writer and editor at the Hartford Courant from 1984 until his retirement in 2008. Since then, he has written many freelance articles for ConnecticutHistory.org and the Courant, including a series of articles for the Courant on Connecticut’s participation in the Civil War.
Of his book, Drury says: “I hope readers will get a sense of what Hartford was like during this critical, often overlooked, period. It was a time when the industrial might of a small state and its capital region was felt worldwide, when its growing ethnic and cultural diversity re-shaped its character and complexity.”
Drury will speak and sell and sign his book at 6:30 p.m. in Conference Room A of Tolland Town Hall at 21 Tolland Green.
The talk is free, but registration is required. To register, call the Tolland Public Library at 860-871-3620.
Library patrons can also register for this program and others by going to the Tolland Public Library’s home page at www.tolland.org/library and clicking on Online Library Events Calendar, located in the middle of the page. Scroll down to the date of the event, click on register and fill out the form. Those who register will be sent an email reminder before Jan. 7.
Since 2010, the author series, funded by the Phoebe Dimock King and Elizabeth C. King Eaton Endowment, has brought writers Caragh O’Brien, Dan Barry, Denis Horgan, Dawn Metcalf, Susan Campbell, Cindy Rodriguez, Susan Schoenberger, Jeff Goldberg, Lucy Anne Hurston, Jane Haddam, Ken Davis and P.W. Catanese to town.
