Windsor native Dr. E. Beulah Winston dedicated her life to fostering human understanding and empowering people, especially young African Americans, through inspiration, education, and encouragement.
One of our dear volunteers, Carlton Parkinson, passed away two weeks ago. We’ll miss him tremendously at Windsor Historical Society. He inspired hundreds of school children to understand and to care a little more about the place they live in. We're re-publishing an interview we conducted with Carl in 2010 in his memory.
The above was quoted from the December 1995 issue of Life Magazine, to commemorate the 125th anniversary of his first day in office as a United States Representative. We know Mr. Rainey as a summer resident of Windsor who lived at 299 Palisado Avenue.
What would it be like to come to this town after a harrowing ocean voyage and adjust to a new climate, new foods, new working conditions, and racial prejudice, as well? Fay Clarke Johnson tells the story of Jamaicans who left their lovely, temperate island to find work in the Connecticut River Valley during WWII in her 1995 book Soldiers of the Soil.
The first black household in the area of Windsor north of the Farmington River was probably that of Moses Mitchell, who bought his first recorded piece of property here in 1791. Moses's brother Oliver came from East Windsor in 1797, buying a piece of property with "two dwelling houses" on the west bank of the Connecticut River near the Scantic Ferry.
There are two sites in Windsor named after someone called Archer: Archer Road, which runs north from Kennedy Road all the way to Windsor Locks, and the nearby Archer Memorial AME Zion Church. But who [...]
They worked in the kitchen from dawn to dusk cooking, washing, and ironing. They emptied chamber pots every morning after sleeping in basements and attics. And they were supposed to be invisible whenever guests came calling. Who are ‘they’? They are the slaves of Windsor’s Chaffee family.