office hours

Former Eagleville School House
South Eagleville Rd
Mansfield, Connecticut,
Thurs.1:30pm to 3:30pm.

Gristmill Lithograph

The full color lithograph
of a new painting of the Gristmill
by artist Charles McCaughtry,
is on sale at the Trust Office.
More Information >

Lois E. Clarke has spent many decades of her life behind a camera focusing on the beauty in the world, and has shared her vision with others through her prize-winning nature, travel, and landscape photographs.

In February, Clarke made certain that others would experience some of the same wonders of nature that initially inspired her by donating $30,000 to Joshua's Tract Conservation and Historic Trust. The funds will be used to support an easement to 89 acres of the Clarke family farm in Columbia, given by Clarke's sister Charlotte Harris to Joshua's Trust in 2006, as well as all future land and easement gifts to Joshua's Trust in Columbia.

"I don't see how we cannot benefit from land that's kept as open space," Clarke simply says. "More of it should be done." Clarke's appreciation of nature began when she was a child growing up on her family's 189-acre farm on Route 87 in Columbia. She attended church and grange functions in the town, which then numbered slightly more than 400 people, but perhaps more importantly, she recalls exploring her family's fields, and collecting her father's half-dozen cows, and swimming in Columbia Lake. "There wasn't a lot to do; you made your own amusements," she recalls.

In 1865, Clarke's great grandfather acquired the family's homestead: a 13-room, center chimney with four fireplaces and a gambrel roof, built in 1742. Clarke, and her two sisters and their parents, were the third family to occupy it. Still in family hands, it is owned by Clarke's nephew.

Clarke attended the town's one-room schoolhouse, started by Rev. Eleazar Wheelock, a Congregational minister, who would later found go on to found Dartmouth College. She is a graduate of Windham High School.

An active member in the Columbia and Wethersfield Historical Societies, on her maternal side, Clarke traces her lineage to William Clark, a principal in the Clark-Dewey Purchase of land from the Indians, an area which is now Columbia. She is very proud of her seven Mayflower and nine Revolutionary War ancestors.

In the 1940s, she left Columbia and made her way to Hartford, attended college for a year and spent a short time working at Aetna and Travelers Insurance Companies, before finding her niche at the State of Connecticut's Health Department. There, she became head of the long term care statistical unit, and, upon her retirement in 1981, was recognized for her role in the development of a computerized registry of the state's tuberculosis patients and for the nation's first automated database of long term care patients.

Clarke's interest in the world beyond Columbia and Hartford began in the 1950s with a trip to Panama, where she visited a friend who was stationed there with her husband. Following her retirement, she indulged her curiosity even further and roamed throughout the country in a camper for more than two decades, accompanied by a friend, visiting and photographing all of the 48 contiguous states and most of the Canadian provinces.

"I started with a Brownie, progressed to medium format Hasselblad-type, moved on to a 35 millimeter," she says. Now, she is "a Nikon addict," as she puts it. She has done digital photography since 2002 and has been instrumental in documenting historic structures and events in Wethersfield, where she now lives.

"Joshua's Trust is extremely grateful to Lois Clarke and the Clarke family for their generosity," said Warren Church, president of Joshua's Trust. "The gift will guarantee the long term stewardship of the Harris conservation easement in Columbia and provide additional funds for stewardship of future properties donated to the Trust in Columbia."

Classified as an advanced amateur or semi-professional, Clarke has been actively involved in the New England Camera Club Council and the Photographic Society of America, which has recognized both her photographic prowess and service to the organizations.

The veteran photographer, who is also a longtime member of Joshua's Trust, simply says of her gift, "It's critical to keep land from being developed."

Joshua's Trust preserves the following properties in Columbia:

Ultey Hill Preserve
Potter Meadow
Goldberg Parcel