"Still crazy over old reliques" is how William Lamson Warren described himself on his seventeenth birthday. That youthful enthusiasm for antique objects would prove to be the defining passion of Bill Warren's long life, during which he forged an extraordinary career as a pioneer in the understanding and appreciation of Connecticut art and architecture. For his innumerable invaluable contributions to the knowledge and preservation of much of the heritage of the state he loved, he was fondly known as "Mr Connecticut."

The Antiquarian and Landmarks Society, one of the many preservation organizations Bill Warren assisted during their formative years, is dedicating its spring 1999 Collectors & Explorers Series to "Mr Connecticut," who died in 1998 at the age of 86. The series, which is being held in Hartford, East Haddam, New London and Litchfield, features presentations by experts who will highlight new discoveries in the fields of research Bill Warren pioneered.

Some of the highlights of Bill Warren's remarkable career, along with glimpses of his warm, colorful personality, were recounted by John F. Page, former director of the Litchfield Historical Society and the New Hampshire Historical Society, in a talk titled "Remembering Bill Warren: A Vision for Connecticut's Past" on March 16 at the Antiquarian & Landmarks Society's headquarters in Hartford. Page was a close friend and colleague of Bill Warren for 35 years.

Bill Warren was born in Boston in 1912, but both sides of his family were deeply rooted in Connecticut, to which the family returned in 1924, when his father became dean of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale. That year the Warrens purchased the 1769 Lieutenant Thomas Catlin house in Litchfield to serve as a summer home. Christened Middle Ridge Farm, the old house, which Bill had carefully restored in the 1960s, would prove a haven and an inspiration for him for half a century.

After a year at Dartmouth, Bill transferred to Yale, from which he received a bachelor's degree, then stayed on to earn a master's degree in American civilization and begin work on a doctorate in pre-Columbian archaeology. During the 1930s, he served as director of the Works Progress Administration's Index of American Design for Connecticut, thereby, in the words of Bill Hosley, "launching a career that awakened a generation to the grace and beauty of old, forgotten things." After serving in the Army from 1942 to 1945, Bill returned to Litchfield to raise dairy cattle, fruit, and chickens on Middle Ridge Farm.

But even as he was tilling the soil and tending the livestock, Bill Warren was avidly pursing his passion for art, architecture and history. One of the earliest articles of the more than 50 he would publish during his lifetime reported his identification of William Sprats, a British prisoner of war during the American Revolution, as the designer of the 1797 Litchfield County Court House.

The work of a number of other obscure artists, artisans, and architects from Connecticut's past would similarly be brought to light by Bill Warren's indefatigable research and publishing. His articles on "Isaac Fitch of Lebanon, Master Joiner," originally published in The Connecticut Antiquarian, later appeared as a single publication under the same title. Long out of print, the book has just been re-issued by the Antiquarian & Landmarks Society.

At the same time, Bill was volunteering his time for the Antiquarian & Landmarks Society. He served on the structures committee, which supervised restoration of the Seventeenth Century Joshua Hempsted House in New London. He was also chairman of the committee that readied the 1782 Butler-McCook Homestead in Hartford, which had been bequeathed to the society, for opening to the public in 1973.

In 1956 Bill's decades-old avocation of uncovering, collecting, researching and sharing his discoveries about Connecticut art, antiques and architecture became his profession, as he accepted the position of assistant director of The Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford. During Bill Warren's years there, the Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin became "the journal of record for scholarly breakthroughs in research centering around the rediscovery of forgotten Connecticut artists and artisans, gravestones studies, provincial portraiture, vernacular architecture, and regional furniture," according to Bill Hosley.

Bill Warren himself was responsible for a number of extremely important articles published in the Bulletin, bringing much deserved attention to such previously obscure figures as folk artists - or "American provincial painters" as Bill preferred to call them - William and Richard Jennys, the Pierpont Limner, John Brewster, Jr, and Dr Samuel Broadbent. Many of these articles were actually catalogues for exhibitions Bill Warren mounted at the Connecticut Historical Society of these artists' works.

It was this position at the Connecticut Historical Society that brought together Bill Warren and legendary antiques dealer Israel "Zeke" Liverant of Colchester, Conn. There developed between the two men a warm friendship and professional relationship that would last until Bill's death. Their relationship led to what Bill Hosley considers Bill Warren's "greatest coup" - the Connecticut Historical Society's acquisition of an unparalleled collection of Eighteenth Century needlework by Prudence Punderson of Preston, Conn.

In a recent interview, Zeke Liverant recalled how he purchased the needlework, along with documents and other family items, from Prudence Punderson's great-great-granddaughter, who had been keeping the materials in a box under her bed in her house in northeastern Connecticut. The day after Zeke bought the objects, Bill Warren came to see them, and instantly recognized the collection's importance to Connecticut history.

The prize of the collection was a unique needlework self-portrait worked by Prudence Punderson around 1780. Titled the "First, Second, and Last Scenes of Mortality," it depicts the young woman seated at a table inside a furnished room, flanked on one side by a baby in a cradle and on the other by a coffin bearing the initials "P.P." "Something clicked in Bill" when he saw that extraordinary work of art, remembers Liverant. The picture was a phenomenal source of information on subjects from Connecticut's past ranging from women's history to decorative arts to needlework to black history, since it includes an African-American girl standing next to the baby's cradle, believed to be the earliest known depiction of an African-American in Connecticut.

The collection had to remain in Connecticut, Bill believed, and he told Zeke Leverant that if he couldn't persuade the Connecticut Historical Society to buy the collection, he himself would raise the money to buy it for the Society. Fortunately that did not prove necessary. The collection was acquired by the Connecticut Historical Society, after which Bill mounted in the Society's museum a life-size recreation of the picture, complete with a coffin Zeke Liverant helped him obtain. Today "The First, Second, and Last Scenes of Mortality" is reproduced in publications more often than any other item in the society's vast holdings.

Bill Warren would go to extraordinary lengths to make sure something that belonged in Connecticut remained there, or came back home from afar. Zeke Liverant remembers one occasion when he alerted Bill to the fact that a woman in Illinois had an Eighteenth Century miniature painting by Reuben Moulthrop of New Haven. After she died, Bill made a special trip to Illinois, where he succeeded in convincing her heirs that they ought to donate the miniature to The Connecticut Historical Society. While on his mission, Bill who suffered from diabetes, passed out on the street - and woke up to find himself in a Chicago hospital. But the risk to his health notwithstanding, he had secured the prized artifact.

At one point, John Page recalls, Bill personally went out on a financial limb to keep a historic artifact from leaving the state. Frustrated by the Connecticut Historical Society's decision not to purchase a settle believed to have belonged to the Talcott family, Bill took out a loan to buy it himself. He later gave it to the society.

After eight years at the Connecticut Historical Society, Bill left to accept a position at Old Sturbridge Village, where he was involved in the restoration of the Thompson Bank, moved to Sturbridge from Thompson, Conn. In 1966, eager to get back to Connecticut and closer to Litchfield, he became director of the Stowe-Day Foundation in Hartford, charged with, among other tasks, restoring the 1874 home of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Although it was "a time when American taste condemned all manner of Victorian art," notes Bill Hosley, Bill Warren committed himself to the Stowe House project with as much enthusiasm and dedication as he had to any of his previous endeavors. He employed his usual hands-on approach, doing some of the archaeological excavation himself.

After the Stowe House opened in 1968, Bill became director of the Litchfield Historical Society. He continued to generously share his accumulated knowledge with countless historic houses, historical societies, and museums.

In 1973, Bill sold Middle Ridge Farm, along with most of the marvelous objects he had acquired during his decades of collecting. Family items donated to museums included portraits of members of the Lamson family painted by Joseph Goodhue Chandler in 1841, which he gave to Memorial Hall Museum at Deerfield. A cherry desk and bookcase made in Derby in the 1790s for one of Bill Warren's ancestors today is at the Tapping Reeve House in Litchfield.

Bill moved to New Hampshire, and proceeded, incredibly, to continue his research and publishing for almost another quarter of a century. His last article was published in April of 1996. In his last years he was incapacitated by the effects of a stroke, and died in 1998.

A lecture series paying tribute to Bill Warren was the idea of Bill Hosley. "Bill Warren's legacy of curiosity and interest in Connecticut arts and heritage is unsurpassed," declares Hosley, who first learned of Bill's reputation for "blazing trails in Connecticut scholarship" when Hosley was a student at Winterthur in the late 1970s. Not long after Hosely became curator of American decorative arts at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, in the early 1980s, he began to research for the major exhibition "The Great River: Art and Society of the Connecticut Valley, 1635-1820." He naturally sought out Bill Warren, who graciously offered his expertise and advice. "He loved the idea that there were people who cared" about Connecticut's past, Hosley recalls. "He was living in an age of exploration, and we are lucky to have had people who had such a high sense of adventure and curiosity."

Even before Warren's death, Hosley had become concerned that the man's enormous legacy was little known by the new generation of scholars who were building on his work. Out of his conviction that it is essential to remember the "people who have enriched our lives," Hosley planned a series that would honor Bill Warren.

"Bill led a very satisfying life," Zeke Liverant says of his late friend and colleague. "Whatever he touched he went after with full dedication and love." All who care about Connecticut's rich heritage are the fortunate beneficiaries of that singular commitment and passion.

The Connecticut Collectors & Explorers Series will continue with Dr Christine Schloss's lecture on "Connecticut and New England Provincial Portraits: Context and Connoisseurship," which will be presented on Tuesday, April 6 at 11:30 am and 5:30 pm, at the Antiquarian & Landmarks Society's headquarters at 66 Forest Street in Hartford; on Wednesday, April 7, at 5:30 pm, at the 1833 Custom House at 150 Bank Street in New London; on Thursday, April 8, at 7 pm, at St Stephen's Episcopal Church Parish House, 33 Main Street, East Haddam; and on Friday, April 9, at 7:30 pm, at the Connecticut Junior Republic on Route 63 in Litchfield.

The following week, Bill Hosley will speak on "Wall Art Revisited: Painted Interiors and Decorative Woodwork," on Tuesday, April 13, in Hartford; Wednesday, April 14, in New London; Thursday, April 15, in East Haddam; and Friday, April 16, in Litchfield.

The series will conclude with Glee Krueger's presentation on "A Needlework Tribute to Bill Warren," on Tuesday, April 20, in Hartford; Wednesday, April 21, in New London,; Thursday, April 22, in East Haddam; and Friday, April 23, in Litchfield. The sites and times for the lectures by Hosley and Krueger will be the same as those for Dr Schloss's presentation.

Admission to each lecture will be $5 for Antiquarian & Landmarks Society members, and $7 for non-members. Reservations can be made by calling the Antiquarian & Landmarks Society at 860/247-8996.

Copies of the reprint of Isaac Fitch of Lebanon, Connecticut Master Joiner, 1734-1791, can be purchased at Antiquarian & Landmarks Society for $12, or $14 for mail orders.

The 1999 Connecticut Collectors & Explorers Series is funded in part by grants from the Connecticut Humanities Council and the US Trust Company of Connecticut. The programs in Litchfield are co-sponsored by the Litchfield Historical Society.