The beginnings of Wilton’s Herbarium started with Anna Elizabeth Carpenter. Miss Carpenter was born in 1833 and lived the early part of her life in Darien, Connecticut. Around 1892 she moved to Wilton and opened a small private primary school in her home on Cottage Row, located across from the present Wilton Library.

Although trained to be a teacher, her lifelong interest was in botany. Anna began collecting plant specimens which she carefully documented and pressed onto herbarium sheets. At the age of nineteen she contributed her first specimen to the herbarium at Yale University. For many years she exchanged botanical information with members of the Society for the Preservation of Wildflowers. Rural Wilton provided numerous ferns and flowering plants for Anna to add to her impressive herbarium collection; it eventually numbered over one thousand specimen sheets.

In 1921 Miss Carpenter donated her herbarium of the wild plants of Wilton consisting of over two hundred sheets to the Wilton Library. The remainder was given to the Connecticut Botanical Society Herbarium located at the Peabody Museum in New Haven. A card file of Wilton Plants observed and identified by Miss Carpenter is located in the Wilton History Room in the Library.

Throughout her life she was an inspiration to many aspiring naturalists.“Auntie” Carpenter was well known by the children in town whom she taught to identify and appreciate Wilton’s native plants. Despite failing eyesight, Anna Carpenter continued to search for wild flowers until she was in her middle nineties. A resident of Wilton for forty-one years, she died a few months before her 100th birthday. A woman of many talents and interests, she holds a unique place in the history of the Wilton community.

The Wilton Garden Club owes a fundamental debt to Wilton botanist Anna Carpenter, whose list of Wilton plants provides a rich source of information and was one of the resources used for the club’s book, Ferns & Flowering Plants of Wilton. Through her records in preserving yesterday for today, Anna Carpenter afforded an inspiration to the Wilton Garden Club to continue a project she began.