Book description
While president of Aetna Life from 1879 to 1922, Morgan Bulkeley served
four terms as mayor of Hartford, two terms as Connecticut's governor,
and one term as a United States senator. His friends and business and
political acquaintances were a who's who of the Gilded Age: Samuel
Clemens, J. P. Morgan, Samuel and Elizabeth Colt, Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Albert Spalding, General Sherman,
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Katherine Hepburn, as well as every president
from Ulysses Grant to Warren Harding. In 1874 Bulkeley formed the
Hartford Dark Blues who soon joined the unruly National Association,
antecedent of the National League. He served as the league's first
president for a year, and was later elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame
in Cooperstown. It was during Bulkeley's controversial
"holdover" term as governor that he earned the nickname
"Crowbar Governor." He used a crowbar to remove a lock that
had been placed on his office door after refusing to vacate the
governor's chambers on a technicality. Written in classic storyteller
fashion, and augmented by copious research, Crowbar Governor offers
readers a privileged glimpse into life and politics in Connecticut
during the Gilded Age. "Crowbar Governor offers readers a
privileged glimpse into Connecticut politics during the Gilded Age, when
Bulkeley served as mayor of Harford, governor of Connecticut, and first
president of the National Baseball League."--Connecticut Explored
KEVIN MURPHY is an independent historian who lives in Rocky Hill,
Connecticut. He is the author of Water for Hartford: The Story of the
Hartford Water Works and the Metropolitan District Commission.
