When we go, we always leave something of ourselves behind.
When she closes her eyes to tell a story, she travels through time, back to when she and her twin sister Harriett were little girls on a big farm. From behind her wide smile a clearly remembered, deeply felt tale evolves, slowly spun in that dropped “r” Yankee drawl. Enfolding Izzy and her 1839 home is the community where their ancestor Thomas Atwood settled in 1739. The house is full of antiques, and has a back yard complete with heirloom apple trees and all the outbuildings that supported 19th century farm life. She lives in the same house and sleeps in the same bedroom that she has since her birth in 1918. As did Harriett until her passing in 1984.You would be excused for thinking such a woman as Izzy might be a bit strange, a lost soul.
You’d be wrong. Isabelle Knowlton Atwood, who died in 2012 after bequeathing her property and the funds to maintain it to Joshua’s Trust, was a formidable woman. She retired from UConn as Assistant Vice President for Finance and was a founding member of both Joshua’s Trust and the Mansfield Historical Society. Izzy supported, organized, and inspired countless local groups. She liked and respected everyone, and the sentiment was mutual. In the words of friend Mona Anderson, “a proud old-fashioned Republican, a thoughtful and community-spirited conservative.” That dedication to a life of accomplishment is not surprising from a woman who had chores since she was a child: filling the wood boxes, feeding and brushing the horses, and fetching the cows in after school.
The sisters never had a dog; their father got them each a calf to care for. Isabelle’s hands make an unconscious combing motion at the recollection. Her love of animals has lasted her long life. She feeds the barn cats, the birds, the possums, raccoons, skunks, even the deer. Izzy always wears something red. She sewed her and Harriett’s matching clothes since they were small, and most of those garments were red or pink. Isabelle will start many a sentence with the words “Harriett and I -”. The sisters were inseparable. “We were our own best friends.” A rapt listener hears her joy and pride in her personal and family history. The fierce desire to preserve her childhood way of life speaks to its richness, and to the radical changes in American rural life in the early 20th century.
In the far pasture lies a good-sized rock, split in half, the tops almost flat. On it the young Harriett and Isabelle sat together on many a summer day. Isabelle can see it in her mind and feels it, warmed by the sun, anytime she wishes.
That devotion to rural life on Wormwood Hill led her to collect not just valued objects, but actual buildings. The Atwood Farm has a barn, a well house, a pig pen, sheep shed, blacksmith shop and corn crib. And a weaver’s shed, carriage shed, privy, a grape arbor, hayfields, and the large orchard. Cows still graze in the back pasture. A story that clarifies the care she took with the house and the collection is this: Isabelle always had two red Chevy Suburbans. She would explain that she couldn’t adequately insure her valuable antiques. Plan B was that even if she went out, a big red vehicle was always in the driveway, strongly suggesting that she was home.
Once again, in her own words: “So here I am, still on Wormwood Hill, 315 years after Peter Cross came to town, and 275 years after Thomas Atwood.” It’s been eleven years now since Isabelle passed on and Joshua’s Trust gratefully moved our office to 68-acre Atwood Farm. You might choose, now that you know her a little, to think of Isabelle in another way: folk hero.
George Jacobi
-Wormwood Hill: Its Settlement and Growth, Rudy J. Favretti, Isabelle Atwood 2009 -personal recollections: Greg and Mona Anderson