Downtown New London

Amtrak station designed by Richardson

station entrance

Block Island Ferry
Thames River bridges in the background

Fishers Island Ferry

Fishers Island is a part of New York State, off the Connecticut coast in Long Island Sound

Eugene O'Neill as a lad in New London

O'Neill was educated in Catholic schools until, as a teenager, he insisted on attending a nonreligious boarding school. He spent his boyhood summers at the family's summer home in New London, Connecticut, the setting of several of his plays. O'Neill's mother had become addicted to morphine after being prescribed it while giving birth to him, and when he was 15 years old, O'Neill discovered his mother's addiction. He then entered an emotionally turbulent period characterized by drunken sprees, including one for which he was thrown out of Princeton University. Despite his problems with alcohol, O'Neill was a voracious reader. He especially liked Irish-born writer George Bernard Shaw, Russian political activist Emma Goldman, and German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Text from Microsoft Encarta

Nathan Hale Schoolhouse

Hale, Nathan (1755-76), hero of the American Revolution, born in Coventry, Connecticut, and educated at Yale College (now Yale University). He taught school from 1773 until shortly after the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775, when he became a lieutenant in the Continental Army. The following year he was promoted to captain. While stationed near New York City under the command of the American officer Major Thomas Knowlton, Hale volunteered, in early September 1776, to perform spy duty behind the British lines on Long Island. Disguised as a schoolmaster, he secured vital military information, but on September 21, before he could return to safe territory, he was captured. The next morning he was hanged in New York City by the British as a spy. His last words are supposed to have been: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."