Doris (Pelton) Burgdorf is a life-long resident of South Windsor. The Pelton family roots can be traced back to John Pelton’s arrival in Dorchester from England. Doris grew up on Main Street, in a house still in the family. Eight people shared the house – five children, parents and a grandmother. As a child, the house had electricity and a furnace, but did not have hot running water or a bathroom! Grandfather Oliver had cattle and ran a slaughterhouse. The family grew tobacco and sold hay. Mother Helen managed the household with a milk business on the side, selling milk by the bottle.
“As a little child, we did not have too many chores, because our mother was very capable and insisted on doing her own work. 
She did not let us wash the dishes. She didn’t want any of them broken. … And as soon as we were eight years old, she sent us down the road to go to work on tobacco.”
(Doris with classmates seated eighth
in from the left, Union School above)
Doris started school in 1936 and attended Union School through 8th grade and then Ellsworth School, where she graduated as valedictorian. She majored in art at Vermont Junior College in Montpelier and then continued her studies in art at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
(Doris at Ellsworth Memorial High School on far right)
Interested in local history, Doris entered a town contest for a new image for a town seal to represent South Windsor. Winning $48, Doris’s design was adopted on June 2, 1969 (Learn more about the town seal here).
Doris was also part of the 1971 effort to reopen Wood Memorial Library after the town had closed it. Around the same time, a friend of her mother’s, Hildred Sperry Raymond, had heard that “Town Farm” on Ferry Lane was for sale. The property, on the Connecticut River, was the site of the Bissell Ferry and the first house in South Windsor. The current structure was built in 1786 and has served as a house, an inn for travelers, a tavern, and a jail before the town purchased it as a “town farm,” where impoverished residents could live in exchange for working on the farm and ferry. Together, Hildred, Doris’s mother Helen Pelton and Doris purchased the property, set on refurbishing it into a private museum. While the house was empty and boarded up when purchased, together they collected all of the furniture and items that fill the house with nostalgia now. From finding items in local attics and cellars to purchasing in second-hand stores in Hartford, Hildred and Helen would take Hildred’s mother for a car ride and come home at night with new treasures to add to the house.
The early 1970s was also when the historic district of East Windsor Hill was created, at the north end of Main Street. Doris served on the town’s exploratory committee to work on the state’s requirements and presented a prospect of ordinance to the town.