Thomas Warham Loomis stood before the Connecticut Senate on May 20, 1874. A state senator representing Windsor and a seventh-generation occupant of the Loomis Homestead, Thomas was the perfect choice to introduce his cousins’ proposed bill to fellow lawmakers. Titled “An Act to Incorporate the Loomis Institute in the Town of Windsor,” the bill outlined plans and governance for a school to be constructed at some undetermined time in the future, funded by the conjectured estates of Thomas’s five cousins. 

Despite any unlikeliness that this bold plan would someday be implemented, less than six weeks later, on July 1, the bill had passed both the Senate and the House. This set the Loomis Institute Founders’ vision for their school into Connecticut’s legislative annals and provided a legal framework for it to be realized — intentionally — after the deaths of the siblings and their spouses. It would be 40 years before the school opened, and the Act served, from 1874 on, as the first iteration of the school’s charter. A copy of Senate Bill No. 5, owned by Thomas’s cousin, James Chaffee Loomis, who was one of the Founders, resides in the Loomis Chaffee Archives collection. 

While James is credited with drafting the bill, his words materialized out of philosophical and practical discussions over two years with his four siblings: Hezekiah, Osbert, Abby, and John, and their spouses. Having outlived all of their children and faced with the prospects of no successive generation, they chose, as Osbert related in a family tribute, “to found an Institution for the instruction, enlightenment & moral advancement of future generations.” Osbert described this as the family’s “cherished hopes and honorable ambition.” 

Bill No. 5 stated that the school would honor the long family history in Windsor and be located on lands of the Loomis Homestead inhabited by the Founders’ ancestors, Joseph and Mary Loomis and their children, beginning around 1639; the school would be for “all persons,” students from near and far, “without regard to state or nation”; the school would be tuition free as long as funds permitted; and “good moral character” would be required of all students and employees. Written during the first decade after America’s Civil War, the bill made a progressive statement on inclusivity: “No officer, instructor, employee, or student shall be made eligible or ineligible for or by reason of his or her religious or political opinions, nor be compelled to acknowledge or sign any religious or political creed or test whatever.”  

This summer marks the 150th anniversary of the “Act to Incorporate.” It’s an opportunity to renew gratitude for the Founders’ progressive vision, their appreciation of place and history, and their astute planning. It also may prompt a reflection on the idea of “beginning.” Could there be other — perhaps many — beginnings of the place known as Loomis Chaffee? The Founders located one beginning in their ancestors’ arrival at Windsor. The Centennial celebration in 2014 honored the school’s opening in 1914. More recently, Loomis Chaffee broadened the view on beginnings with a land acknowledgment statement. It reads, in part, “…we must also acknowledge the land where we stand, which was tended for centuries by the Poquonocks and the Podunks, as well as the other Algonquin nations of southern New England, and which was taken from them in the 1630s… . We honor the Indigenous communities of New England as we continue our quest to make this school an inclusive and welcoming space for all.” 

Sometimes looking back is a way to move forward. 

Timeline for the Act

• 1639 — Founders’ ancestors, Joseph and Mary Loomis and their children, inhabit the land of the Loomis Homestead
• 1874
  • MAY — Bill proposed by Thomas Warham Loomis in the Connecticut Senate
  • JULY — Proposed bill passes the State Senate and House
• 1914 — School opens
• 2014 —Centennial celebration of school opening 
• 2024 — 150th anniversary of the Act to Incorporate