Harrison Edward Purdy

Harrison Edward Purdy was a Charter Member and Vice President of the Derby-Shelton Rotary Club when the club was admitted to membership in Rotary International on May 24,1927. He advanced to become the second Club President serving that office for year 1928-29. He was a pharmacist and owner of Purdy Drug Company located at 100 Elizabeth Street in Derby. He was an active member of the Connecticut Pharmaceutical Association and was elected to the board of trustees for the Connecticut College of Pharmacy when it was formed in 1925. This institution later became what is now the College of Pharmacy of the University of Connecticut. Harrison Purdy was born September 19,1875 in New York City, son of Edward J. and Eleanor Miller Purdy. 

His father moved the family to Derby in the late 1800s where he was employed as “piano finisher” at the Sterling Company. Harrison worked as a “drug clerk” for a pharmacy in Shelton before establishing his own business in Derby in 1903. Meanwhile his marriage to Anna Belle Bradley, daughter of John Sanford Bradley, produced one daughter, Eleanor Bradley Purdy born in 1904. Eleanor married Hawley Wardell Lincoln, Jr. a funeral director in New Haven. Harrison died at age 85 in Woodbridge, CT on February 24, 1961 and Anna Belle died six years later in New Haven.