"So the good, the great, and the beautiful pass on, but what a fund of lovely memories they bequeath to the oncoming generations. May the guardians of these memories in Hartford cherish and preserve them within their own setting."

-- Katherine Day, daughter of Alice Hooker Day, granddaughter of Isabella Beecher Hooker

From the middle of the 19th century and into the 20th, Nook Farm, a neighborhood bordering the Park River in Hartford, flourished. American literary, political, and religious leaders, including some of the most radical thinkers of the time, gathered on its porches and in its parlors. While their children played among the trees and scattered over the lawns, the neighbors asked the questions and shared the ideas that would help shape post-Civil War society as the country looked forward to the new century.