Charles Storrs became a school teacher at age 18, hired a substitute to work on his father's farm, and started himself out in business.

He spent three years selling Mansfield-made silk to wholesale merchants, worked on commission for a manufacturing firm in Hartford from 1845 to 1850, and moved to Brooklyn in May 1850.

[1] "Having experienced the intellectual privations that are too commonly incident to farm-life,"[4] the Storrs brothers in December 1880 offered to donate land and money to the State of Connecticut to found an agricultural school in their hometown of Mansfield.

[3] The gift was accepted and Storrs Agricultural School established by act of the Connecticut General Assembly on April 21, 1881.

[6] Augustus Storrs initially imposed restrictions on his deed of gift, insisting that the State of Connecticut pay him $12,000 in the event that it decided to relocate the school and sell off the land within twenty years.

He also sought to bar the state from using the land for any purpose but an educational institution, explicitly ruling out use for an insane asylum, poorhouse, or reformatory.

Amid mounting threats from the legislature to move the school elsewhere, Storrs agreed to convey the land without restrictions.

[1][3] Augustus continued to aid the school until his death, remitting $30 in water rent in 1889 to buy library books and surrendering two acres of his garden in 1890 to enable a dormitory to be built.

[9] Both brothers, their wives, children, and other relatives are interred in Storrs Cemetery, in a large family plot at the crest of a hill overlooking UConn's campus.