Connecticut
Researcher restores forgotten Black military family to Connecticut history
SIMSBURY, Conn. (WFSB) – As America marks its 250th year, researchers are uncovering stories of people whose names didn’t make history books but whose sacrifices shaped the nation.
In Simsbury, one such story centers on Esther Wallace Jackson, a woman born free to formerly enslaved parents who became the anchor of a multigenerational military family whose service spans nearly every major American conflict.
Jackson’s story was almost lost, scattered across probate records and fading documents.
Connecticut researcher John Mills spent years piecing it together, uncovering a formerly enslaved family whose military contributions include service from the Revolutionary War through the Civil War.
Mills, a genealogist and founder of the nonprofit Alex Breanne Corporation, discovered the family while tracing the family tree of a Civil War soldier from Bloomfield.
“It turns out he was a grandson of Peter and Esther Jackson. And so, I started chasing down that story and discovered that Peter Jackson had been enslaved in Simsbury,” Mills said.
The family’s military legacy runs deep. Jackson’s father, London Wallace, served in the French and Indian War.
Her three brothers fought in the Revolutionary War.
Generations later, seven of Peter and Esther’s grandsons served in the Civil War, and six never returned home.
“With every major conflict, this family is deeply involved,” Mills said.
For men who were enslaved or newly freed, military service carried deeper meaning.
“You’re fighting for the country while you also don’t have the same freedom as others,” Mills said.
Mills partnered with the Simsbury Historical Society and the Department of Veterans Affairs to install a burial marker honoring the family’s military legacy.
The marker was placed next to the headstones of Peter and Esther Jackson.
In June, descendants gathered to see their family’s untold story commemorated.
“The intent was to have every person that we knew of who fought in one of these U.S. conflicts that were a part of their family on this monument,” Mills said.
Jackson’s obituary described her as a respected community member who walked two miles to her church on Hopmeadow Street well into her nineties.
Her legacy now lives in the Simsbury Public Library, where a hand-painted portrait depicts her likeness using features of her descendants.
“We unveiled it on June 19, 2025. Now, we have something visual so that the family and the community have to align with the story of Esther Jackson,” Mills said.
Mills said the research serves a broader purpose beyond memorializing individuals.
“The information we find, the research we do, is not only for them to be memorialized. It’s to create something that the public and the community, that specific town, has something that gives them the history,” Mills said.
The Wallace-Jackson descendants say they plan to return to Simsbury this Memorial Day to place flags at the monument bearing their family’s name.
Click here for more information about the Alex Breanne Corporation.
Copyright 2025 WFSB. All rights reserved.
LYME — A body was recovered from the Connecticut River on Saturday, according to officials from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
At about 1 p.m., a vessel on the river reported seeing a body in the area of the Chester-Lyme Ferry, DEEP said.
The Environmental Conservation Police, along with the Connecticut State Police Major Crimes Unit and Lyme and Cheshire fire departments, responded to the area and recovered the body, DEEP said. The body has been sent to the state chief medical examiner, DEEP said.
Bill Flood, a media relations manager for DEEP, said the body was identified as a male and appeared to have been in the water for an extended period of time.
The medical examiner will determine the manner of death and EnCon is investigating, Flood said, noting there is no believed threat to the public.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Even as a born-and-raised New Yorker, I have a relatively open mind when it comes to pizza. When I’m out on the road, I’ll eat at any pizzeria as long as I can see the oven from the counter and buy pizza by the slice. However, the idea of any place outside the Big Apple proclaiming itself “the Pizza Capital of the United States” is just sacrilege. Connecticut doubled down on its ludicrous claim last weekend by approving the rollout of a special “Pizza State” license plate. This is the worst affront to the craft since Chicagoans started shilling their crust-bowl casserole as pizza.
Connecticut Foodshare
Let’s actually take a look at this license plate. One peek, we all know the rules. “The Pizza State” plate features a similar blue-to-white gradient as on the standard Connecticut license plate. The aforementioned self-proclaimed moniker replaces the state’s official nickname, “The Constitution State,” beneath the plate number. To the right of the number is an image of a pizza slice ripped straight from Microsoft’s ClipArt library. It’s a flat image that looks nothing like what’s served in New Haven. Connecticut drivers will be able to pick up a “Pizza State” plate for $65.
This is a pizza war for good
The only undisputedly good aspect of the “Pizza State” license plate is that its introduction will help feed Connecticut’s hungry. According to CT Insider, the $28.6 billion budget bill approved by the Connecticut General Assembly last weekend, which authorized the plate, also directly appropriated funding to Connecticut Foodshare. The sitewide food bank will also receive $50 from each $65 license plate fee, as it continues to provide millions of free meals to food-insecure people.
Back to the pizza debate at the heart of the matter. Governor Ned Lamont declared Connecticut the country’s pizza capital back in 2024 as part of a marketing campaign to promote the state. That declaration could have grounds for war in a different century, but individual states apparently don’t fight wars against each other anymore. Connecticut had better go back to being a UConn Husky-obsessed suburb before New York makes Greenwich the next Toledo.
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