The Salmon Brook Historical Society (SBHS) is fortunate to have such extensive facilities to run its operation. Prior to 1966, SBHS worked out of the basement of the Granby Library (now the Visiting Nurse Association) and hosted exhibits there. In 1966, the society had to move because the library needed the room to expand.
In the same year, two sisters and SBHS members, Mildred Colton Allison and Carolyn Colton Avery donated the Abijah Rowe House to the society. Ten years later, they donated the Colton Barn, which included the property that SBHS sits on today. Since that time, SBHS has acquired the Enders House, the Cooley one-room schoolhouse and built the Preservation Barn for research and displays. On Sunday afternoons, the SBHS offers tours of all these buildings to educate the public about the town’s history.
This was not the first time the Colton sisters were so generous to a group or organization. Carolyn Avery was the chairman of the board of education in 1949. Two years earlier, the town had decided to close the one- and two-room schoolhouses in Granby, West and North Granby and replaced them with the Consolidated School, which would soon become Memorial School. The long brick building that faces Salmon Brook Street opened in 1948 and is now part of Granby Memorial High School. When the town needed land to build the new school, the Colton sisters stepped forward and donated the large parcel.
Did they think that in donating the land they also assured that future Granby students wouldn’t have to go out of town for high school? For many decades students, including the Colton sisters, went to either Simsbury or Hartford. The consolidated school would grow with the town, and in 1958 the first GMHS graduating class received its diplomas.
In their youth, the Colton sisters lived at 251 Salmon Brook St. and walked to a red two-room schoolhouse on the corner of North Granby Road and Salmon Brook Street. The school had two rooms; each had a woodstove and a blackboard. One room had students from first grade to fourth grade, and the other room had students from fifth grade to ninth grade. School would start at 9 a.m. and end at 4 p.m., with an hour for lunch. The sisters walked home for lunch, then returned to school for afternoon classes. For recess, the children played on the hill next to the cemetery. If they needed water, they went to the house across the street, which had a well, and brought back buckets of water.
During their high school years, Mildred went to Hartford Public High School and Carolyn went to Simsbury High School. Each took the train from the Granby train station on Hartford Avenue to get to their respective high schools. Mildred and Carolyn each stayed with a family during the week and took the train home on Friday after school. Following high school, Mildred went to Mount Holyoke College to study history and economics, and Carolyn went to Lasell Junior College to study business and then to Bouve School of Physical Education.
After college, Mildred worked at Connecticut Mutual for a few years, then married Nathan Allison, who worked for the State of Connecticut for 25 years as a civil engineer and later ran the family tobacco business and became the superintendent of the Granby Cemetery. Carolyn Colton married Paul Avery, who owned his own insurance agency representing many of the large Hartford companies.
In 1937 Mildred and Carolyn’s mother Mary Colton died, and their father Fred followed two years later, leaving the sisters with a good deal of wealth including a lot of land. Fred Colton was a tobacco farmer who provided work to many Granby residents, especially during the Great Depression. The sisters donated the farmland he worked to the town and provided space not only for the high school, but also for the Salmon Brook Historical Society, the Town Hall, the police station, and the library. They also gave land to Stony Hill and the Lost Acres Fire Department.
As a member of the Salmon Brook Historical Society, I always recognize the generosity of the Colton sisters. And as a Granby resident, I am grateful to the Colton sisters for the gifts they gave this town. Their obituaries imply that they were unassuming women leading quiet lives, but now you know how much they gave to this town.
To learn more about Mildred Colton Allison or Carolyn Colton Avery, please join the Salmon Brook Historical Society by calling 860-653-9506, or go online at salmonbrookhistoricalsoiety.com.