The city, settled in 1840 and named in honour of the merchant and philanthropist, Anson Green Phelps (1781-18J3), was originally a part of the township of Derby; it was chartered as a borough in 1864 and as a city in 1893, when the township of Ansonia, which had been incorporated in 1889, and the city were consolidated.
The institute comprises an academic department (in which all students are enrolled) with a seven years' course, the Phelps Hall bible training school (1892), with a three years' course, and departments of mechanical industries, industries for girls, and agriculture.
With Austin Phelps and Lowell Mason he prepared The Sabbath Hymn Book (1858).
Ficklen above cited, another by the same author in collaboration with Grace King (New Orleans, 1902) and another (more valuable) by Albert Phelps (Boston, 1905), in the American Commonwealth Series.
The borough has a public library (1881), a Masonic Home, the Gaylord Farm Sanatorium of the New Haven County Anti-Tuberculosis Association, the Phelps School (for girls) and the Choate School (1896, for boys).
