Bert Anderson: 

He Died On Duty

Only two Ridgefield police officers have lost their lives while on duty. One of them died in the town hall.

In the days before Ridgefield had its own formal police department, Bert Anderson was the town’s night constable, also called the night watchman, hired to patrol the village mostly on foot during the evening and early morning hours.

Anderson appeared “in excellent spirits” when he stopped by the Ridgefield Bakery at 4 a.m. on Oct. 9, 1939.

A few hours later, workers arriving at the Town Hall found Anderson dead in the constables’ office. He had been shot through the abdomen with his own 41 caliber revolver.

State police from Troop A on East Ridge, led by Lt. Leo F. Carroll and including the medical examiner, Dr. R.W. Lowe, investigated. Based on their findings, county coroner Patrick McIlroy of New Canaan declared that Anderson’s death was accidental.

“Lt. Carroll said Anderson was probably removing his gun belt when the weapon fell to the

floor and discharged,” The Stamford Advocate reported.

 Anderson was 60 years old.

A native of Baltimore, Md.,  Jesse Ebert Anderson was born in 1879 and came to Ridgefield around the turn of the 20th Century. He had been for many years superintendent of Casagmo, the estate of Miss Mary Olcott on Main Street.

In 1905, he married Florence Lillian “Lilly” Whitlock, a local girl. They had two children, including Lyman Ebert Anderson, a longtime Ridgefielder.

Various accounts says Bert Anderson had been chief of the Ridgefield Fire Department, but no record of that could be found. However, his grandson, Rodney A. Anderson, was chief  in 1972-73.

The other ill-fated officer was John Palmer. 

Charles S. Nash: 

The First Chief

Charles S. Nash, the town's leading carpenter and builder for many years, has had the unusual distinction of having his birth and very early life recorded in a diary that has been published in The Ridgefield Press and is available online. 

On Friday, Oct. 8, 1865, Jared Nash, his father, inauspiciously wrote in pencil in his diary: “Clear, some warmer. Dug potatoes in orchard. Went to P.O. Just at night Chas. S. Nash born.”

Later entries talk of “Charly” and the toys and shoes his father made for him, his sicknesses, and his first birthday and baptism. 

As a boy Charles Nash attended the old Flat Rock School on Wilton Road West and the West Lane School, now a museum on Route 35.

He learned the carpenter's trade from William H. Gilbert, and took over his business when Gilbert retired. William F. Hoyt joined him and as Nash and Hoyt, they did much of the building in Ridgefield during the first quarter of the 20th Century, including mansions like Casagmo. 

Unlike his diarist dad, who stuck to the farm, Charles Nash was very involved in the town. He was the first chief of the Ridgefield Volunteer Fire Department, helped organize the Boy Scouts here, and was a member of the Board of Burgesses that ran the old village borough. He later served on the Board of Finance, as a trustee of the Methodist Church, a director of the Ridgefield Savings Bank for many years, and vice president of the First National Bank and Trust Company. He ran for state representative on the Democratic ticket in 1906 and 1910.

Nash was also very sharp. The Press once reported that while on the Board of Burgesses, “Mr. Nash figured out how to connect the sewer line for the new Bryon Park development into the borough’s main sewer system, rather than to build a new treatment plant. Mr. Nash was quite proud of that accomplishment because the skilled civil engineers who had been called in to study the problem said it couldn’t be done.”

He died in 1929 at the age of 64. Among the  pallbearers at his largely attended funeral was Francis D. Martin.

Ebenezer W. Keeler: 

A Remarkable Man

Beyond having a rather remarkable beard, Ebenezer W. Keeler was a rather remarkable 19th Century man —  an admired farmer, an avid reader, a town leader, and a builder who worked on major mansions and led construction of a landmark church.

A descendant of one of Ridgefield’s founding families, Ebenezer Wood Keeler was born in 1840 on the family farm along Branchville Road, land that had belonged to Keelers for four generations. 

He was educated at the Rev. Dr. David Short’s private school on Main Street where he became “a great reader,” according to a contemporary biography. His love of reading led him, along with other community leaders, to serve on an 1871 committee that put together the first public library in Ridgefield. His wife, Emma, was also active in the project, and helped care for the first collection of 2,500 books.

Like his ancestors, Keeler was a farmer and he was quite good at it. “Ebenezer Keeler approached the operation of his farm with the same tenacity of his forebears and he could make that farm work where others just could not make it go,” said town historian Dick Venus. (Today’s Twin Ridge development is part of the old Keeler farm.)

But Eben Keeler pursued other vocations as well. He was a surveyor and did much  surveying work in the south part of town. Perhaps more noteworthy, he was involved in the construction of several mansions, at least one of which still stands today: The house of book publisher E.P. Dutton on

High Ridge. He worked on Casagmo, the mansion that once stood at the northern end of Main Street. During his building heyday, he employed crews of 20 to 30 men.

A member of the First Congregational Church, Keeler put his knowledge of construction to work there, serving as chairman of the building committee that in 1888 erected the current stone church at the corner of Main Street and West Lane.

He was also a public official. In 1865, he was elected a state representative from Ridgefield;  at 24, he was the youngest member of the House. He then became the town’s chief executive. However, election wasn’t always easy. Venus tells it this way:

“Eben was elected first selectman of Ridgefield back in the days when it was necessary to elect a board of selectmen each and every year. He won in 1877, in 1878 and again in 1879. After losing in 1880, he came back to win in 1882, in 1883, and in 1884. He lost again in 1885 but came right back and was returned to office in 1886 and 1887. Once again he lost in 1888 and by so doing, missed the ‘pleasure’ of serving the town during the great blizzard that year. However, Eben stormed back to win in 1889, and again in 1890, truly a remarkable man.”

Keeler died in 1900 at the age of 59. His wife, who died in 1934, was the daughter of Dr. Archibald Y. Paddock, a noted New York City dentist who committed suicide in 1889 after accidentally shooting her brother, Harry (see Dr. Paddock’s WHO WAS WHO profile).

George M. Olcott: 

The Man from Casagmo

George Olcott left Ridgefield with a strange legacy: A stone wall, a barn and a name, plus the destruction of a treasured historical building.

Olcott came to Ridgefield in 1892, buying the ancient Stebbins farm at the north end of Main Street. The house, built in 1727, had stood in the midst of the Battle of Ridgefield in April 1777 and served as a hospital for the wounded. “For many generations tourists came to see the bullet-scarred walls and the bloodstained floors of the west room, which were reminders of the conflict which took place around it,” historian Silvio Bedini wrote.

However, Olcott tore down the house, saving only the front door, and replaced it with an Italianate mansion. He called the place Casagmo, a word created from his initials, GMO, and “casa,” the Italian word for house.

And 75 years later,  a wrecking ball laid waste to Casagmo.

George Mann Olcott was born in 1835, in Brooklyn, N.Y. His father, Charles Mann Olcott, was a

founder of Olcott & McKesson, a drug firm that, after Charles’s death, became McKesson & Robbins, a name that lasted into the 1960s for a company that is today the McKesson Corporation, a pharmaceutical distributor and health care systems conglomerate that had $122 billion in sales in 2012.

    Young George attended Columbia College Grammar School. “However,” wrote his daughter, Mary, in a family history, “a youthful delight in caricature terminated his school life, for the headmaster … failed to appreciate a portrait of himself done by the young Mr. Olcott, and a caning was ordered. The boy’s father gave him his choice, either to undergo the caning or leave school. George M. Olcott left school and entered the world of business, where he achieved notable success.”

At age 16,  Olcott became a clerk in a wholesale drug firm. By 21, he was a partner in a drug and chemical importing company, soon called Dodge and Olcott, of which he eventually became president in 1904. His products were not all pharmaceuticals; a big portion of his business was the ingredients in perfumes and food flavorings. He retired when he went blind at the age of 78.

Dodge and Olcott continued in business until 1952, when the Fritzsche Brothers purchased the firm, eventually calling it Fritzche, Dodge & Olcott. In 1980, it was acquired by chemical giant, BASF, which 10 years later, sold it to Givaudan, an international flavor and fragrance company.

Olcott became involved in the local social and business life of the town, serving as president of the library association. He was a founder and second president of the First National Bank and Trust Company of Ridgefield (which through many mergers is now Wells Fargo). He also maintained a residence in New York City, and was on the boards of a half dozen banks and other institutions there.

A popular tale involving Olcott was related by Ridgefield Press publisher Karl Nash in 1975. “On

one occasion Mr. Olcott tangled with Samuel S. Denton, the coal and wood merchant who later owned much Ridgefield real estate [and is profiled in Who Was Who]. Denton had acquired the Paddock house, which stood just south of St. Stephen’s Church, and he started moving it up Main Street to a planned site north of Mr. Olcott’s property.

“When the house wouldn’t go between Mr. Olcott’s stone wall and the high bank on the other side of the street (now the Coffey homestead), Denton asked Olcott’s permission to remove a section of his wall temporarily to let the house pass through. Olcott refused.

“The house sat in the middle of the street for a time while Denton scratched his head for a solution. At length he decided to saw the house in half and move it in two sections instead of one. Mr. Olcott watched in amusement.”

Denton never put the two pieces together. Half of the Paddock house still stands, just north of the Casagmo northern boundary on Main Street. The other half, which was moved down around the corner onto Danbury Road, was later torn down to make way for a newer house, just opposite

Girolametti Court. And Olcott’s wall still stands today along the Main Street border of the Casagmo condominium complex.

After George Olcott died in 1917, daughter Mary lived at Casagmo until her death in 1962 at the age of 97 — a poet and genealogist, she was rather a grand dame in Ridgefield society.
According to the newsletter published for Casagmo residents, George Olcott was originally buried in Ridgefield, but his remains were eventually moved to a Brooklyn cemetery after Mary Olcott had a disagreement with the owners of the Ridgefield cemetery in which he was interred. 

As for the door to the historic Stebbins house, George Olcott had stuck it in the cellar of the

Casagmo mansion, where it sat for years. After the death of Mary Olcott, Ridgefield native

Robert A. Lee got to worrying about the future of the relic. He knew it was in the cellar and he doubted that Miss Olcott’s heirs would care about it. So Lee loaded it onto his car one day and took it to his family’s 18th Century homestead in Farmingville. There the door remained for several years until Lee finally decided to give it to the Ridgefield Library and Historical Association. Around 40 years ago, as it was moving its focus away from the historical side of its original mission, the library donated the door to the Keeler Tavern Museum, where it is today — on display for all to see, especially appropriate as the town is about to mark the 240th anniversary of the Battle of Ridgefield.

Mary Olcott’s heirs sold the property in the mid-1960s to Jerry Tuccio, the homebuilder, who

received the rezoning for the town’s first large-scale apartment development. However, Tuccio decided to stick to single-family homebuilding, and sold the rezoned land to David L. Paul, a New York attorney and apartment builder, who razed the mansion in 1968 after years of neglect and vandalism had taken their toll. Paul built 320 apartments. While virtually all evidence of the Casagmo estate was destroyed, Paul retained one major feature: The barn. He and his architect, Lee Harris Pomeroy, restored and remodeled the building into Casagmo’s community center.

Paul later also built Fox Hill on Danbury Road. There, at the recommendation of the Planning and Zoning Commission, he included condominiums. When these turned out to be quite popular, he converted Casagmo’s rentals to condos.

Many Casagmo roads bear names connected with the families that lived there, such as Stebbins Close, Olcott Way, Quincy Close, and Lawson Lane — the last two ancestors of the Olcotts. 

Ebenezer W. Keeler: 

A Remarkable Man

Beyond having a rather remarkable beard, Ebenezer W. Keeler was a rather remarkable 19th Century man —  an admired farmer, an avid reader, a town leader, and a builder who worked on major mansions and led construction of a landmark church.

A descendant of one of Ridgefield’s founding families, Ebenezer Wood Keeler was born in 1840 on the family farm along Branchville Road, land that had belonged to Keelers for four generations. 

He was educated at the Rev. Dr. David Short’s private school on Main Street where he became “a great reader,” according to a contemporary biography. His love of reading led him, along with other community leaders, to serve on an 1871 committee that put together the first public library in Ridgefield. His wife, Emma, was also active in the project, and helped care for the first collection of 2,500 books.

Like his ancestors, Keeler was a farmer and he was quite good at it. “Ebenezer Keeler approached the operation of his farm with the same tenacity of his forebears and he could make that farm work where others just could not make it go,” said town historian Dick Venus. (Today’s Twin Ridge development is part of the old Keeler farm.)

But Eben Keeler pursued other vocations as well. He was a surveyor and did much  surveying work in the south part of town. Perhaps more noteworthy, he was involved in the construction of several mansions, at least one of which still stands today: The house of book publisher E.P. Dutton on High Ridge. He worked on Casagmo, the mansion that once stood at the northern end of Main Street. During his building heyday, he employed crews of 20 to 30 men.

A member of the First Congregational Church, Keeler put his knowledge of construction to work there, serving as chairman of the building committee that in 1888 erected the current stone church at the corner of Main Street and West Lane.

He was also a public official. In 1865, he was elected a state representative from Ridgefield;  at 24, he was the youngest member of the House. He then became the town’s chief executive. However, election wasn’t always easy. Venus tells it this way:

“Eben was elected first selectman of Ridgefield back in the days when it was necessary to elect

a board of selectmen each and every year. He won in 1877, in 1878 and again in 1879. After losing in 1880, he came back to win in 1882, in 1883, and in 1884. He lost again in 1885 but came right back and was returned to office in 1886 and 1887. Once again he lost in 1888 and by so doing, missed the ‘pleasure’ of serving the town during the great blizzard that year. However, Eben stormed back to win in 1889, and again in 1890, truly a remarkable man.”

Keeler died in 1900 at the age of 59. His wife, who died in 1934, was the daughter of Dr. Archibald Y. Paddock, a noted New York City dentist who committed suicide in 1889 after accidentally shooting her brother, Harry.

Peter McManus: 

Judge and Legislator

In 1945, during the second of his six terms as representative from Ridgefield in the General Assembly, Peter McManus helped draft the State Labor Relations Act. The Republican’s post that year as chairman of the House labor committee was rated the “toughest assignment” of the session by a Hartford newspaper columnist. 

The act established a three-member Board of Labor Relations, aimed at protecting the rights of citizens to join unions and bargain collectively. 

When Governor Raymond E. Baldwin was ready to sign the bill, he called  McManus and other sponsors to the ceremony. It was April 12, 1945. Just then the phone rang with news of Franklin Roosevelt's death, and the signing was postponed.  McManus often observed in later years that he had an edge of Democrats who didn’t remember the exact date on which President Roosevelt died.

Once the bill became law, the governor named McManus to the board, a post the Republican held through Democratic and Republican administrations until his retirement in 1967. 

A native of Scotland, Peter A. McManus was born in 1889 and was trained as a builder and architect. He came to Ridgefield as a young man, at first working for “Big Jim” Kennedy, the town’s major builder.  One of his first significant jobs was construction of the sunken gardens at Casagmo in 1911-12. (After Miss Mary Olcott died in 1962, McManus proposed that the town purchase the Casagmo estate and use the mansion as a town hall, a proposal that did not gain much support.)

McManus eventually started his own construction company, and many men who were to become top carpenters in town got their training under him, including Dan Tobin, Terry Knoche, Gus Venus, and John P. Leary.

When the town had a Trial Justice Court, he was a judge for many years. The court handled  smaller offenses such as  breaches of the peace, domestic disputes, bootlegging, and traffic violations. It was the last that took up most of the court’s time, and one of the most frequent offenses back in the 1920s was driving without a license. One day, McManus heard 16 cases of people caught without a license — he gave the opinion afterwards that half of Ridgefielders on the road had no license. “Some of these people reasoned that because a license was not needed to drive old Dobbin,” said historian Dick Venus, “they should not have to get one to drive the family car.”

McManus served six terms  in the Connecticut legislature from 1941 until 1953, and was also on the Board of Assessors. He was active for more than half a century in the Knights of Columbus.

Two of his three sons also became active in the community — James, as the town’s building inspector in the 1970s and 80s, and Joseph, as a sheriff and volunteer fireman.

He died in 1970 at the age of 80.