Paintings
The Wood has 13 watercolors and drawings by the Watson sisters of East Windsor Hill, Amelia Montague (1856-1934) and Edith Sarah (1861-1944). The sisters were well known, successful artists in their day: Amelia recognized for her translucent watercolors, Edith, who went on to master the new art of photography, for her studies of working women in Canada. Most of the paintings held by Wood Memorial Library & Museum were given to the library by Edith after her sister’s death. This collection of artwork by the Watson sisters continues to grow as other works are donated. Other Watson materials, including Edith Watson photographs, are stored in the archives.
Local artist Albertus Jones (1882-1957) is well represented with both oil and watercolor paintings. A Post-Impressionist artist, Jones painted his personal response to familiar New England scenes which often feature houses, barns, curving roads and darkly outlined trees. The Wood’s collection also includes a self-portrait and a portrait of his daughter, Dorothy, who became a commercial artist. A charter member of the Connecticut Academy of Fine Art, he taught for 20 years at the Hartford Art School; later in several nearby schools and universities. In 1953, he founded the South Windsor Art League and taught in local schools.
Other art on display include a portrait of Edith Vibert, the Friends of Wood Memorial Library & Museum’s first volunteer librarian, by Herbert E. Abrams and a Hudson River School-style painting by Nellie Terry Bancroft.
Antique Furniture 
Highlights of the Friends of Wood Memorial Library & Museum furniture collection are 18th century pieces done by Eliphalet Chapin and his apprentices. Chapin’s home and workshop were located just to the north of the library on the east side of the street. The collection also includes 18th and 19th century furniture by other artisans that were donated by local residents, and a shelf clock made by local craftsman Eli Terry.
Quilts
Our quilt collection includes:
The South Windsor Bicentennial Quilt, finished in 1976, which features scenes and buildings from the town’s past.
Click here for detailed descriptions of each square and the name of its maker.
The Long Hill Missionary Circle’s Penny Square Friendship Quilt, made by squares that were embroidered in the early 1890s by residents of the Long Hill section of town. The squares were kept in the attic of Suzie Lathrop Briggs, one of the stitchers; they had never been pieced together. In 1977 they were given to The Wood and sewn into a quilt by the Friends of Wood Memorial Library & Museum Quilters.
An 1894 Crazy Quilt which has an Odd Fellow emblem embroidered at its center spelling out “Friendship – Love – Truth.” It was won in a raffle at the Odd Fellows Convention in Chicago in 1895 by a delegate from Connecticut and later donated to Friends of Wood Memorial Library & Museum.