Longtime area residents always say they are surprised by Norwich’s rich history when they tour the Slater Museum or the Leffingwell House Museum, said Dayne Rugh, 31, who has been interim director of the Slater Museum since March.

“Every time I hear that, I know we must be doing something right. So I really strive to create and foster really positive experiences.”

Rugh’s wife, 29-year-old Regan Miner, said bringing the city’s nationally significant history to life and making it accessible to residents and visitors is the goal they both have for Norwich. Miner is executive director of the Norwich Historical Society (NHS).

“You don’t have to travel to these premier historic destinations across the country or world,” she said. “Norwich really has a lot to offer.”

Part of these goals involves “getting people to really appreciate and be educated on history right in their backyard,” Rugh said, and ultimately redeveloping and capitalizing on Norwich’s history.

Their multi-phase plan involves telling “dynamic stories about Colonial American history, Native American history, the history of women, the history of African Americans in Norwich. There are so many things to do, and it’s very overwhelming sometimes when you think about it, but that’s what we want to do,” he said.

“When a town or organization is looking to develop major historic or cultural attractions that will bring in not only tourists but locals that can support the community year-round, you need to build an infrastructure to support the vision,” Rugh added. “The infrastructure includes publicly open historic assets, both indoor and outdoor, events and programming, and leisure activities.”

Norwich, he said, is filled with historical assets and attractionsnot found anywhere else.

“It is our goal to make many of these attractions ‘visitor-ready,’” he said. “Regan and I work together between the Norwich Historical Society and the Society of the Founders of Norwich (SFN) to develop several historic properties our organizations own or lease so that visitors and locals looking for something to do have the option of experiencing an all-encompassing historic experience in the Norwichtown Historic District. It is our hope that we can continue to expand and collaborate with other organizations to increase this network.”

The society has also launched several initiatives over the past five years that are designed to strengthen Norwich’s heritage tourism efforts, Miner said. They include collaborating with the 15 Norwich Heritage Groups, opening the Norwich Heritage & Regional Visitors’ Center, creating the self-guided Walk Norwich Trails, stabilizing and restoring numerous historic buildings, creating a robust series of guided walking tours through The Last Green Valley’s Walktober program, and sponsoring “various heritage-themed events, such as reenactments, lecture series, wreath laying ceremonies, and events surrounding Norwich’s infamous native son, Benedict Arnold.”

Now that the first phase has proven to be successful, Miner said, “We now need to build capacity and grow this effort in a sustainable manner.”

Part of their vision, she said, “includes modeling the Norwichtown Historic District after Historic Deerfield in Massachusetts, or Wethersfield, Connecticut. These two communities have comfortable historic areas that are not densely commercial and have a walkable heritage experience with buildings dating from the eighteenth century that are open to the public.”

Miner added, “Our goal is to transform the historic Norwichtown area as a walkable experience where visitors or residents can visit properties that are open to the public, go on a self-guided walking tour, and stroll through the Lowthorpe Meadow or explore the Norwichtown Colonial Burying Ground. We are in the process of creating a five-year plan with low cost, achievable strategies with little change to infrastructure to build the identity of Norwich as a heritage tourism destination.”

The Norwich Historical Society, she added, sees heritage tourism as a big part of the city’s economic development.

“Heritage tourism can be a vehicle to address a host of issues affecting Norwich’s competitiveness, identity, quality of life, and prosperity,” Miner said.

Throughout the pandemic, she said that NHS continued working with SFN on many historic preservation projects including the 1772 Joseph Carpenter Silversmith Shop and the ongoing work on the c. 1763 David Greenleaf House.

“Recently we formed a partnership with the owner of the c. 1750 Diah Manning House with the goal of restoring yet another historic structure in the Norwichtown Historic District to be opened to the public,” Miner added.

Other ongoing projects include the c. 1789 East District Schoolhouse and the c.1783 Dr. Daniel Lathrop Schoolhouse.

Uncas Leap Heritage Park on the Yantic River is another prolonged project, said Miner, who is on a committee with a number of city and community leaders. There is now an offsite parking lot, and an interpretive sign has been installed.

But it is not all business for Rugh and Miner. This married couple enjoys dressing in period garb for Leffingwell House Museum’s reenactments.

Emphasizing that he is not a professional reenactor, Rugh said he has a Revolutionary War era military regimental uniform and a civilian outfit. “I’ve taken on the persona of Christopher Leffingwell, as well as other generic personalities during the colonial period.”

Miner, a Norwich native, last performed two skits for the museum seven years ago wearing what she described as “a typical civilian colonial-era woman’s gown.”

Working for NHS in various roles since 2014 has been “incredibly meaningful and fulfilling,” Miner said, adding, “Further, I was very proud of NHS for quickly pivoting our programming to a virtual platform last year during the global pandemic. We created a series of virtual walking tours and hosted a virtual winter lecture series which are all accessible on our website for on demand viewing.”

She said their “walk leaders are just a wealth of knowledge” and she was afraid that as time passed, they would “lose some of that knowledge as people move away or pass away. So having things recorded this past year was just an excellent tool to preserve this history for the future.”

Mayor Peter Albert Nystrom described Rugh and Miner as “young entrepreneurs” and “a power couple for all the best reasons.” Adding that they “represent the best in the city,” he said they “continue to nurture new opportunities for historic remembrance and participation.” In addition to being “just the nicest couple you could want to know,” Nystrom said Miner is a “bright young gal” who knows how to write grants well, acquire grants and help with restoration of historic sites throughout the city.

He added that he believes Rugh working at the Slater Museum is “absolutely the perfect fit” and that he continually studies.

“I see them engaging younger people, getting them excited about history.”

Miner received the Mimi Findlay Award for Young Preservationists in 2018 from Preservation Connecticut, the Connecticut Governor’s Conference on Tourism Rising Star Award in 2016, and was a 40 Under Forty recipient in 2016.

Rugh said his favorite accomplishments involve working “every day with students, teachers, and the public at Slater Museum and Leffingwell House Museum” and giving “them an experience they never had before. Many times they are just little moments, but sometimes the smallest things make the biggest difference.” He said he is also proud that in 2020 they “successfully raised nearly $40,000 to replace the roof on the Leffingwell House Museum - and in the throes of the pandemic lockdown no less!”

Miner and Rugh met at the University of Connecticut at Avery Point at an “icebreaker event” in the fall of 2010 when she was an incoming freshman and he was a senior. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history from UConn and a master’s degree in public history from Central Connecticut State University. Rugh received a bachelor’s in American studies from UConn and a master’s in museum studies from Johns Hopkins University. After becoming friends and then dating, they married in November 2019.

The couple, who were interviewed by telephone and email, has been involved as volunteers with Leffingwell House Museum since 2014 – Rugh for several years as its president and Miner as a board member. Both the NHS and Leffingwell House Museum have entered into a formal partnership with SFN, Rugh said. “So we have a number of different collaborative projects we’re working on.”

Prior to becoming interim director at the Slater Memorial Museum after Vivian Zoe retired, Rugh was hired in July 2017 to be the museum’s director of education.

“There hadn’t been anybody in that role for a few years. So this was an opportunity to approach this role from a much different perspective,” he said, because his predecessor had a formal art background and he doesn’t. “So I wanted to bring my passion and my focus in museum education to bring some new types of programs into the Slater Museum.”

Before the pandemic began, Rugh said “big hits” included a series on art videos and new educational programs that focus on the museum’s exhibition galleries that can be experienced in person or online. “All throughout the pandemic, we built a brand new infrastructure for online resources of the museum on our website.”

He said they produced snippets of three- to five-minute-long videos about the museum and its collection.

“We have digital lessons that can be done in schools, or even at home with parents and their kids. We’ve also started our own YouTube channel as a result of all of these videos that we were making.”

With a rich history of different cultures that came to Norwich to make a living, Rugh said, “There’s an incredible amount to learn and I always feel like I learn something new every day. That’s what I love the most.”

Miner said she also loves Norwich and that there is a plethora of local information, such as between Yantic and downtown, for example. “One of the greatest things that I think is most interesting is if you really think about it, there’s 400 years of history within a span of 2 miles.”

Norwich’s history is “noble and certainly flawed,” Rugh added. “History can get really ugly when you get into the nitty gritty and some of these stories are difficult to tell, but they’re absolutely necessary to tell, because again, it creates a whole sense of purpose. It tells us where we came from. It tells us how we got here and it can at least provide inspiration and a starting point for where we want to be years from now.”

Miner added, “There’s a lot of nostalgia regarding what Norwich was and various Facebook groups and pages dedicated to sharing old pictures of Norwich, and they’re so wonderful to see. But I would encourage people to instead of talking negatively about Norwich and how it was, be a part of the solution to make things better in town. Volunteer for different arts, cultural and heritage-based nonprofits who are working on trying to make Norwich a wonderful place to live, work and play.”

The couple said they enjoy dining out, reading, hiking and walking around neighborhoods and looking at all the old homes, thinking about what the original owners would have been doing and who they would have been interacting with hundreds of years ago. “It’s fun going into either the Yantic Cemetery or the Colonial Norwichtown Burial Ground and finding their grave sites. They almost become familiar to us as people back then, and then we can carry on their legacy up until today,” Miner said.

For more information about virtual tours and in-person events, go online to www.norwichhistoricalsociety.org, www.slatermuseum.org and www.leffingwellhousemuseum.org. Self-guided walking trail brochures can be accessed on your Smartphone or by going to walknorwich.org. They can also be obtained by stopping by Norwich Heritage and Regional Visitors’ Center at 69 East Town Street in Norwichtown.