The Barnes Museum Pressed Glass Goblet Collection 

Twinkling in the window of the conservatory of The Barnes Museum in Southington, Connecticut is a sea of unique pressed glass goblets, each one not quite like the other. When Bradley Barnes (b.1883) died in 1973 he bequeathed the contents of his home, the sturdy 1836 homestead itself, and the grounds it is thereon to the Town of Southington with the vision of it being preserved as a museum and library. The historic homestead of Bradley Barnes, the grandson of Southington’s once wealthiest man and largest landowner Amon Bradley, is not lacking in contents for us to preserve. During the unique time in history he was alive, Bradley accumulated numerous relics representative of every period in American history since his birth. 

The Barnes Museum is the proud recipient of a grant from the Early American Pattern Glass Society. This grant established the Bradley Barnes Early American Pattern Glass Fellowship. This fellowship provides funding for a research position at the museum whose aim will be identifying and documenting the historic 1,100 glass goblets within the museum's collection. Learn more about this year's fellowship recipient below. 

Daniel J. MacNeil graduated cum laude from Central Connecticut State University in 2019, receiving his B.A. in the field of History. While an undergraduate at CCSU, he worked as an intern for the Veterans History Project which offered experience with digital archives and oral history. Dan worked with the CT Historical Society in 2019 to create a digital timeline of the history of LGBTQ+ communities in Connecticut. His undergraduate work includes research on service members whose names are inscribed on the Iwo Jima Memorial in New Britain, CT. In 2019, he presented his research findings regarding tenement law in CT between the years 1911 and 1914 at the Association for the Study of Connecticut History. Before attending CCSU, he worked as a classroom assistant at Middlesex Community College, helping English students with their in-class assignments and grading student work.
    As of the fall of 2022, he has been enrolled in the Public History M.A. program at CCSU. He has taken courses that serve to train historians in the most up-to-date practices in the professional field of Public History. The work he has done within these courses has included the production of a paper focused on the history of Rocky Hill, CT, and the production of a story map providing the history of Indigenous, African American, and Female individuals who served during the American Revolution at the Redding Encampment. The project was produced for CrisRadio, and can be found on the project’s website, forgottenvoicesrevwar.org.  Currently, he is working at CCSU to help digitally archive the work of Professor Emeritus Mike Alewitz and that of his former students. He is also working at the Barnes Museum as an intern, where he assists in collections research, tours, and event assistance as needed. In his spare time, he volunteers at the Rocky Hill Historical Society. ​

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Recent Publications

Curator Christina Volpe wrote a brief article in the Newsletter of the National American Glass Club detailing the history of how the goblet collection came to be. To read the full article and the rest of the summer edition of the newsletter visit this page.