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Join Walter Hinchman and Donna Dufresne of the Pomfret Historical Society at the Vanilla Bean Café’ for cozy fireside chats about Pomfret’s historic neighborhoods and hidden history.
Anna Matilda McNeill Whistler was oh-so-much-more than the famous artist’s mother. She was the CEO wife and mother of the Whistler family while her railroad architect husband George Washington Whistler rose to fame. Tragically, George died of Cholera in April 1849 in St. Petersburg, Russia while building a railroad for Tsar Nicholas I. Anna returned with her two sons, James and William to Connecticut, and by November 1849 arrived in Pomfret where she registered the boys in Roswell Park’s Christ Church Hall Academy. She rented the house next to the Vanilla Bean and built a vibrant social and religious life while managing her sons’ education. Although a grieving widow, Anna Whistler was not one to pine away. She cared for the sick patients of Dr. Williams, organized the Christ Church fair, cared for her aged mother, and tried to keep her budding artist son, Jamie, out of trouble.