In the years preceding the opening of The Loomis School, the Island was home to families and farms. A photograph taken in 1902 by itinerant photographers, the Howes Brothers of Ashfield, Massachusetts, captures one view from this neighborhood, and in particular, the Phelps House.  Later used as a faculty residence and eventually torn down to make way for the Katharine Brush Library, this stately Georgian-style house was first home to generations of the Phelps family, their servants and farm hands, boarders and extended family members. As with many of the more than 20,000 surviving glass-plate negatives documenting the Howeses’ work, residents posed in front of their home. But instead of photographing the head of the household, well known Civil War veteran and prominent tobacco farmer Ellsworth N. Phelps, with his wife and son, the Howeses depicted two women, one possibly being Phelps’ longtime domestic servant Lucy Scott.  

Born in Richmond, Virginia, Lucy took up employment in the Phelps household around 1895. She was 24 years old and later appears in the Phelps household listings in the 1900 and 1910 U.S. Census records. Lucy married Enfield, Connecticut, native Dan Scott in 1905, and he joined her on the Island. In an oral history interview conducted in celebration of Dan’s 100^th birthday and now in the collection of the Windsor Historical Society, Dan recalled using oxen and horses for plowing and working the 46 acres of meadow land to the east of the house. Lucy did the domestic work of the household, which most likely included laundry, food preparation, and cleaning. A local newspaper published a photo of Dan in front of the Phelps House driving a sulky with his favorite horse, North Star. By 1915, deaths in the Phelps family left Lucy and Dan as the caretakers and residents of the farm. They raised tobacco and cows for about three years before the home was purchased by the school.

In their final half decade on the Island, Lucy and Dan witnessed the area’s transformation into a school. Headlines in The Hartford Courant read, “Ceaseless Activity Marks Erection of the Buildings for the Great Preparatory School” and “Steam Shovels Going All Day Long.” The Courant reported on “the large crowds [that came] to watch the operations.” The excavation of the building sites marked the first use of steam shovels for this purpose in Windsor. The modernization of one of Windsor’s oldest parts became a spectacle for visitors and local residents.

Eleven years earlier, the Howes Brothers had traveled to see the Island too. With their 8-by-10 large-format view camera poised on the back of a wagon, they found what an author called “one of the beauty spots of the historic town. …The large old-fashioned house … with the stately trees in front and the green fertile meadows stretching to the Connecticut River … made it a place which many liked to see.” Their photograph documents the place and the witnesses to history who resided there.

Photo credit: Windsor Historical Society, Windsor, Connecticut