Brooke Toczylowski

Existing as an alternative archive, this ongoing body of work (including Twelve Yards of Trading Cloth), explores the historical, ecological, and emotional landscape of Cotton Hollow, a nature preserve in South Glastonbury, Connecticut. A living monument to ecological succession, this site presents important questions about missing voices in the historical record, the possibility of memory held by the more-than-human, and a blurring of boundaries between who and what belongs in "nature." 

Before white settlers arrived it was the winter home of the Nayaug, a tribe of the Wangunk, part of the Algonquin federation. In 1636, English settlers came across the Connecticut river and purportedly made an agreement with the local sachem, Sowheag, to use the land. Thirty-five years later, in 1671, a confirmatory deed was written, effectively trading the town of Glastonbury, approximately 50 square miles today, for twelve yards of trading cloth. The settlers harnessed—for 200 years—the power of the water in service of multiple industries (anchor works, lumber yard, cotton mill, and more). Two large dams, destroyed in the early 20th Century, terraformed Roaring Brook and have forever altered its landscape. In 1777, Eunice Stocking lost her husband and three sons to an explosion at the gun powder factory feeding the Revolutionary War. From 1814 to the 1890's, the Hartford Manufacturing Company, which employed hundreds of people, including kids, processed cotton grown by plantations in the American south. The trees were razed and a village was formed for the workers. If you look closely on your walk in the woods, you will find the land littered with ceramics, bricks, and foundations of buildings.