Taverns, Beer, and Civil Rights

I recently purchased a Waterbury token on a whim while looking for information about a Pete’s Tavern featured in a series of articles in 1949 (more on that below). I had no way of knowing whether the Pete’s Tavern on the token was the same Pete’s Tavern in the newspaper articles, but I impulsively placed a bid on eBay and wound up being the only bidder.

Pete's Tavern Token, front and back

Now saddled with a Pete’s Tavern token, I set about researching tokens in an effort to learn when it was made, trying to see whether or not the token was connected to the Pete's Tavern I had read about in the newspaper articles from 1949.

The available material about merchant tokens was entirely unhelpful, as it was all too generalized. From what I read, my token could have been produced anytime between the 1880s and the 1940s.

Next, I tried skimming the Waterbury City Directories for Pete’s Tavern. Here’s where things started to get interesting.