John S. Smalley:
An African-American Who Fought
— and Died — In the Union Army

Few people today realize that a half dozen African Americans from Ridgefield served in the Civil War — even though, thanks to the 1850 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, they weren’t even considered citizens of the United States. That’s probably because their stories have never been told.

A remarkable example was John Smalley, who was too young to enlist on his own, and who became among the last Union soldiers to die in the service of his country.

Born around 1846 on Ned’s Mountain in Ridgebury, John S. Smalley was only six years old when his father died. His mother passed away two years later, leaving him an orphan. He was probably cared for by his aunt, Betsy Watson, until he got older. 

At some point Frederick Starr became John’s “guardian.”  Starr, who in 1860 was a 28-year-old butcher with a wife and two small children,  lived on Elm Street in Danbury. He later operated a grocery store in that city.

Smalley may have been in training with Starr  to become a butcher. However, when Smalley was only 18 years old and volunteered to join the Union Army, he gave his occupation as “laborer,” a wide-ranging term that could include anything from farming to ditch digging. And he gave his birthplace as Ridgefield and said his residence at that time was Bridgeport.

Since he was not yet an adult, Smalley needed the permission of a parent or guardian to sign up. In an affidavit dated Nov. 27, 1863, Frederick Starr stated: “I hereby give consent to have John S. Smally, my ward, enlist in the service of the United States for the term of three years.”

He was assigned to Company B of the newly created 29th Colored Volunteers — a regiment so called because military units in the Union Army were segregated (even though they’d been integrated in the Continental Army 90 years earlier). 

The men of the 29th were often paid less than their white counterparts and suffered other forms of discrimination. They may even have been cheated out of money due to them for their service. In a history of the 29th Regiment, Sgt. Isaac J. Hill described “the inducements held out to men to join this Regiment” including: “They were to receive a bounty of $310 from the State, $75 from the County from which they enlisted, and $300 from the United States. The $310 from the State we received, the other bounties we did not receive.” Hill was an African-American who served as a regiment orderly, probably because he could read and write. He was also a minister.

The 29th spent a couple of months training in New Haven — today, a monument to the regiment stands in New Haven’s Criscuolo Park where the training took place; it lists on its stones the names of all the members of the regiment. 

The 29th left for Beaufort, S.C., in March 1864. “Never did my ears hear, or my eyes perceive, or my heart feel the strong yearnings of nature as they did at that moment,” Hill wrote. “Mothers weeping for their sons, and wives for their husbands, and sisters for their brothers, and friends for their friends, that were then on their way to the scene of conflict. White and colored ladies and gentlemen grasped me by the hand, with tears streaming down their cheeks, and bid me bye, expressing the hope that we might have a safe return.”

After a brief stint at Beaufort and Hilton Head, which had been taken earlier by Union troops, the regiment was sent to Virginia where it participated in the fighting to take Petersburg and Richmond. Like so many engagements in the Civil War, the battles were fierce and the aftermaths ugly. “When I looked upon the dead and wounded, it was awful to see the piles of legs and arms that the surgeons cut off and threw in heaps on the ground,” Hill wrote.

During this fighting on Oct. 27,  John Smalley was wounded “while on the skirmish line.” His casualty report said he suffered a “severe” spine injury.

Hill did not think much of the medical attention injured Black soldiers were receiving. “Many ... cases could be saved by a little care and attention after the battle, but the complexion and rank of a man has a great bearing,” he said. “There was a great distinction made among the wounded, so much so that it would make the heart of any Christian ache to see men treated so like brutes.”

Despite this, Smalley recuperated and was back in service within a few weeks, though he seems to have been reassigned to less stressful work as a company cook instead of a soldier. 

Members of the 29th were among the first Union troops to enter Richmond after it was abandoned by the Confederacy in 1865. And on April 4 they witnessed a visit by the President. As Abraham Lincoln walked more than a mile from the James River to Jefferson Davis’s former headquarters, many people lined the street cheering. Wrote Hill:

All could see the President, he was so tall. One woman standing in a doorway as he passed along shouted, “Thank you, dear Jesus, for this sight of the great conqueror.” Another one standing by her side clasped her hands and shouted, “Bless the Lamb — Bless the Lamb.” Another one threw her bonnet in the air, screaming with all her might, “Thank you, Master Lincoln.” A white woman came to a window but turned away, as if it were a disgusting sight. A few white women, looking out of an elegant mansion, waved their handkerchiefs. President Lincoln walked in silence, acknowledging the salute of officers and soldiers, and of the citizens, colored and white. It was a man of the people among the people. It was a great deliverer among the delivered. No wonder tears came to his eyes when he looked on the poor colored people who were once slaves, and heard the blessings uttered from thankful hearts and thanksgiving to God and Jesus. The gratitude and admiration amounting almost to worship, with which the colored people of Richmond received the President must have deeply touched his heart.”

Five days later Lee surrendered at Appomattox and 11 days later, Lincoln was dead.

Toward the end of April, the 29th sailed from Richmond for Norfolk via the James River. “We left many kind and weeping friends standing on the wharf bidding us God speed, and wishing us a safe return,” Hill reported.

From Norfolk, the regiment sailed for south Texas, with a stop at New Orleans. The troops arrived at Brazos July 7, part of a 50,000-man force along the Gulf Coast and the Rio Grande dealing both with relations with Mexico and with the beginnings of reconstruction in Texas. Only two months earlier, what some have called the last battle of the Civil War took place outside Brownsville — after the Confederate States had ceased to exist. In the skirmish at Palmito Ranch May 12 and 13, the Confederates overcame a Union Army attack. 

To reach the military base at Brownsville, the 29th’s troops had to march 20 miles inland through mosquito-infested marshes and waters sometimes waist deep. 

“It had not rained in this part of Texas for six weeks, and yet the mud in the roads was in places up to a man’s knees and for miles hub deep,” Hill recalled. “I was astonished to see the many stragglers strewed all along the road.  Many of them died and were buried in the forest, with nothing to look at their graves but the wild beasts of prey.”

Many members of the regiment became sick and wound up hospitalized, including both John Smalley and Isaac Hill. 

It was a nightmare, Hill recalled. “There were seven hundred sick in this hospital, four hundred of that number in the ward with me,” he wrote. “The hospital stewards and nurses were men with no human feeling. The poor sick were dying ten per day and before they were cold the hospital stewards would search them, and take anything valuable that they found about them before they reported them dead. It would be impossible for me to tell the many instances of cruelty perpetrated on the poor sick soldiers by the hands of these colored stewards. They acted more like demons than human beings. The fare was also very bad; we had two pieces of bread and a pint of coffee per day.”

Hill survived. John S. Smalley didn’t — he died of dysentery on Sept. 27 in that “hospital.”

During its war service, the 29th Regiment lost a total of 198 men, including 45 killed or mortally wounded in battle. More than three times the battle casualties  —  153 men — succumbed to disease.

Two days after Smalley died, word was received that the regiment was ordered home to Connecticut, where it was disbanded.

  

Smalley was buried in a national cemetery on the post at Brownsville. However, in 1909,   more than 1,500 soldiers who were buried at Fort Brownsville were moved to Alexandria National Cemetery in Pineville, La. Thus, John Smalley’s remains lie today in the Deep South, a land whose soldiers he had fought and from which fled slaves that his grandparents, “Uncle Ned and Aunt Betsey” Armstrong, had assisted at their station of the Underground Railroad on Ned’s Mountain in Ridgefield.

Although he was born in Ridgefield, the name of John Smalley is not found on any monument or in any history book in his native town. However, it is engraved in stone in Wooster Cemetery in Danbury. There, a monument dedicated in 2007 honors African Americans from greater Danbury who served in the Civil War. 

John D. Edmonds: 
His Pension Lived On

Too often  people of talent and promise are lost to war. Such was the case with John Edmonds, but it wasn't a Civil War bullet or blast  that ended his military career and may have contributed to his early death. And, amazingly,  his 80-year-old widow was reapplying for pension benefits more than a half century after his death.

 John D. Edmonds was born in Ridgefield in 1832, a son of Robert Chauncey and Abby Darling Edmonds who lived on Silver Hill Road,  a short distance west of Wilton Road West. By 1850, when he was 18, Edmonds was teaching at one of Ridgefield’s one-room schoolhouses. (His father, Robert, was an official of the Flat Rock School district, but the Flat Rock school committee did not employ John.)

He met Harriett Eliza “Hattie” Edmond, a first cousin with a “singular spelling,” and they were married on  Aug. 22, 1853, in Portchester, N.Y., officiated by a Presbyterian minister, according to research by Judith Adams, a descendant of his family. Hattie was 16 and John, 21.  

Hattie was a daughter of Aaron and Harriett Edmond of Ridgefield (some members of the family spelled their name Edmond but most chose Edmonds — and a few appeared as Edmunds). Apparently John, Hattie  and her parents all shared an interest in the West — western New York, that is, an area that had been opening up to farming development after the Revolution. By 1855, John and Hattie, and their baby daughter, Emma, were living near the Finger Lakes, at Benton, N.Y., with her parents and other family members 

But Benton was not west enough. By 1860 John was teaching school in Ada, Mich., just east of Grand Rapids. 

When the Civil War broke out, Edmonds was quick to respond. Despite having a wife and two young children and being 29 years old, he enlisted  in the 2nd Regiment of Michigan Cavalry Volunteers at Grand Rapids in September 1861, signing up to serve three years. 

By January 1862, he was stationed at the Benton Barracks in Saint Louis, Mo., when the
accident that helped doom him occurred. Something spooked the horse he was riding, and it took off, out of control. The horse ran past a shed, from which roof boards were projecting. Edmonds collided with the boards, which hit him in the lower ribs of his right side, and he was thrown from the horse.

The injury was so severe, Edmonds was unable to return to active service and was honorably discharged from the army in May 1862. He returned to his family, who were living in Grand Rapids, and according to medical records, was unable to work more than a few days at a time. 

Since teaching was a rather taxing job, Edmonds apparently decided to take up law as a profession since he could more easily coordinate his workload to his physical disabilities. He began law schooling in Grand Rapids and became a lawyer.

Meanwhile, his brief service made him and his family eligible for an army disability pension that provided money off and on for a half century — long after he had died.. But to obtain veterans disability payments, he and especially his widow, Hattie, went through what must have been tiring application procedures several times over. Just surviving records reveal more than 50 pages of submissions and correspondence,  including testimony from doctors on the nature of his injury, his disability, and his death as well as evidence of his marriage and his children. 

Even a character reference was provided.  Said one physician who backed up his claim,  “Mr. Edmonds is an entirely upright and reliable man of good habits and I know nothing to invalidate his claim.”

Soon after returning to civilian life, John Edmonds began applying for the  pension. In 1863,  Dr. E.R. Ellis examined him and rated him two thirds incapacitated. “Applicant complains of severe pain in his right side over the region of the short ribs ... which at times, especially on exposure or over exercise becomes greatly aggravated,” the physician said.

He received a pension of $5.33⅓  a month ($64 a year) — equivalent of about $112 a month or $1,350 a year today.

However, his health continued to deteriorate. He and probably also his family, by then including two boys and a girl, moved back to Ridgefield, probably to live with his parents. On July 23, 1865, he died of what Ridgefield physician Nehemiah Perry determined to be “consumption” — what we now call tuberculosis. He was only 33 years old and is buried with his parents in the Hurbutt section of the Ridgefield Cemetery on North Salem Road.

Subsequent documentation described the disease as “contracted while in the service.”

After his death Hattie began applying to take over his benefits, and a year or so later, started receiving $8 a month in “widow’s relief,”  an amount increased after another  year to $14 apparently to include support for the three children whose existence had required additional documentation.

However, when she married Charles P. Scott in 1870, Hattie lost her pension. Nonetheless, the children — all still minors — remained eligible, but apparently Hattie had to reapply to keep those modest support payments coming to her new name, Hattie E. Scott. As each child reached 21, the benefit for him or her stopped and by the early 1880s, the family was no longer receiving any military pension payments.

All that later changed many years later. Charles Scott died in 1911, leaving Hattie a widow for the second time. Apparently it was six years before she realized that, as an unmarried widow of a Civil War-disabled soldier, she was once again eligible for John’s pension payment.

In 1917 at the age of 80 and living in Loveland, Colo., Hattie again began a tedious process of applying for a pension, including digging up half-century-old records and testimony. 

She succeeded. The pension was still $8 a month, and despite time and inflation, had changed little in buying power. In 1866, $8 had been worth the modern equivalent of $141. In 1918, it was worth $138.

Hattie Edmonds Scott collected that $8 a month or $96 a year until her death in 1923 at the home of her son, Lynn Edmonds, in Loveland. She was 87 years old. The local newspaper described Hattie as a “pioneer” of Larimer County, Colo, “having come to the county in 1871” and noting that her husband had  “at one time been county clerk.”

Her first husband and Lynn’s father, Civil War veteran John Edmonds, who had died 52 years earlier, was not even mentioned. 

Timothy M. Cheesman, M.D.:

The Doctor’s Stone Legacy

Timothy Cheesman didn’t get to spend much time in Ridgefield but he nonetheless left behind an edifice that has been a part of helping humankind in various ways for nearly a century. 

Which is fitting, since Dr. Cheesman had spent his life trying to heal others.

Although descended from old Quaker stock in Philadelphia, Timothy Matlack Cheesman was
born in New York City in 1824, a son of a local physician, John Cummins Cheesman. Following in the footsteps of his father, he graduated in 1859 from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, now known as Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Even before completing his medical training, Dr. Cheesman was serving as a surgeon in the 7th Regiment of the New York National Guard, starting in 1853. In 1861, he was mustered into national service in the Civil War as a surgeon with rank of colonel on the Staff First Division of the New York National Guard. He remained in the guard after the war, retiring in 1874.

He maintained a practice in New York for many years and was the father of Dr. Timothy Matlack Cheesman Jr., also a Columbia graduate who became a pioneer in the teaching of bacteriology. 

In the late 1880s, like many other wealthy city folk, Dr. Cheesman Sr. and his wife, Maria Louisa, decided to build a country home in Ridgefield. They chose nearly 30 acres on the east side of East Ridge, an area that was being touted as “Prospect Ridge” for its view.

Cheesman was probably ill and may have been seeking the clean air of the country climate to help his health or at least as a place to rest. He had Bright’s disease, which would lead to kidney failure and prove fatal for him (and for his son in 1919). 

In 1886, he made out a will, distributing his property to his wife and children. But on March 1, 1887, he added a codicil to the will, noting he had recently “purchased certain property at Ridgefield, Connecticut, upon which I am about to erect a dwelling house.” He added,  “I give and devise unto my wife Maria Louisa Cheesman in addition to the bequests and devises to her in said will contained, the use of said land and any dwelling house which may be thereon erected at the time of my death, with the furniture, plate and pictures which may then be contained therein…” (“Furniture, plate and pictures” was an old legal term for “contents.”)

This showed Cheesman was concerned about his family’s future; at the same time he was dating the construction of the house at 1887.

He named the place “Matlack,”  an ancestral name in the family of his mother, Mary Matlack Hicks Cheesman. The exterior of the house was almost all stone, perhaps reflecting the fact that it was built on a rock outcropping that projects well into the cellar of the house and is quite visible there.

Dr. Cheesman died July 8, 1888, at Matlack. He was only 63 years old. (His son was 66 at his death in 1919.)

Maria Louisa Cheesman continued to use Matlack until her death in 1903. 

In 1922, the estate was acquired by the Holy Ghost Fathers (officially now called the Congregation of the Holy Spirit), who set up a school for novices — new members of the order — who would get their initial training to be priests or brothers there.  Holy Ghost missionaries were  sent to countries around the world. Many of them spent their lives helping the poor in poverty-stricken nations. 

The order enlarged the house, especially for dormitory rooms, and built the addition with stone to match the original dwelling.

Declining numbers of candidates for the order caused the Holy Ghost Fathers to shut down

the novitiate in 1970 and move operations to their seminary at Ferndale in Norwalk. The town bought the property in 1971, paying $395,000 ($2.4 million in 2019 dollars) for 26 acres and sundry buildings.

Matlack and its dormitory addition were soon used as headquarters for the  public school administration offices, overseeing a growing school system that reached as many as 6,000 students in the early 1970s.

Outbuildings on the property became Ridgefield Guild of Artists gallery, Ridgefield Theater Barn performance center, and Marine Corps League quarters. Some of the estate land is the Bark Park and Fitzgerald Little League Field.  The town also donated some of the land for 25 units of

privately developed affordable housing called Halpin Court along Halpin Lane, opened in 1991.

In 1987, soon-to-retire First Selectman Elizabeth Leonard announced plans to turn the main building into congregate housing for the elderly. The facility at 51 Prospect Ridge opened in 1991 as “Prospect Ridge congregate housing,” and includes 34 one-bedroom apartments with 24 hour supervision, housekeeping services, and a common dining room with one meal a day.

The town also built 20 two- and three-bedroom affordable apartments at Prospect Ridge soon afterward.

Dr. Cheesman would probably be pleased to know that the refuge he built during his final illness had turned into a place that has provided help for the poor, education for the community, housing for the elderly, and even a spot for dogs to play.

Henry G. Stebbins: 

Civil War Congressman

Ridgefield’s second native-born Congressman apparently didn’t like politics much, preferring the world of high finance.

According to the official Library of Congress records, Henry G. Stebbins was born in Ridgefield in 1811, though the New York Times said in his obituary that he was a native of that city.  

Henry was a great-great grandson of Benjamin Stebbins, one of Ridgefield’s founders whose large saltbox house stood at the north end of Main Street and was used as a hospital during the Battle of Ridgefield. (Razed around 1893, the house stood on the site of today’s Casagmo.)

Henry’s parents were John and Mary Largin Stebbins. A Ridgefield native, John became a fairly well-to-do bank president in New York City and the couple may have been living in New York

in 1811. However, Mary Stebbins may have been staying with the family in Ridgefield when Henry was born.

(Henry’s sister, Emma, was born in New York City in 1815. Emma became a noted American sculptress and feminist lesbian — her 1873 statue, “The Angel of the Waters,” also known as the “Bethesda Fountain,” stands in Central Park, probably thanks in part to her brother, who headed the Park Commission.)

His father wanted Henry to become a lawyer and sent him to a private school.  However, according to a rather bizarre account in his Times obituary, “while prosecuting his studies, he was accidentally struck on the head with a heavy ruler, and was prostrated for some time from the effects of the blow. When he recovered, his physicians insisted that he must give up his studies and his father, reluctantly abandoning his original plans, provided a position for him as an errand boy in the bank.”

Clearly, the ruler blow had no lasting effect for, by 1833 and in his early 20s,  the “errand boy,” was working for S. Jaudan & Co., and that year became a member of the New York Stock Exchange. In 1859, he founded his own brokerage, Henry G. Stebbins & Son. 

He became a colonel in the 12th Regiment of the New York militia in 1847 and for much of his life was known as Col. Stebbins. 

Stebbins eventually rose to the top of the stock exchange, serving three terms as its president: 1851-52, 1858-59 and 1863-64. During the last term, he was also a U.S. congressman.

A Democrat, Stebbins was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1862, took his seat March 4, 1863, but resigned on Oct. 24, 1864, six months before his term ended. He left because he felt his Democratic constituents didn’t support his hard-line approach to the Civil War; he was a strong supporter of President Lincoln’s handling of the conflict. Many Democrats just wanted the war to stop.

“Throughout the session I favored a vigorous prosecution of the war, until the authority of the Government should be reestablished over every part of the United States,” he said in his letter of resignation to the “Democratic citizens” of his district.. “Throughout the session I was opposed to the taking of any steps to a peace calculated to weaken the national authority, or that required negotiations with men in rebellion who had not laid down their arms.

“I am now convinced, though with much regret, and have now to acknowledge my conviction that in all these respects my conduct is, and would continue to be, disapproved by a large majority of those who elected me.
“That you may have the opportunity to put in my place one who will more truly carry out your views, I have resigned my seat.”

Stebbins added, “In the future all my efforts from the position of a private citizen will be directed to the support of such men and such measures as I shall consider best calculated to sustain the honor of my country, to develop its unparalleled resources, and to perpetuate our beneficent institutions.”

A subsequent convention of the Union Party, a conservative party that promoted both the union and the constitution, nominated Stebbins to fill his own vacancy.

“The bold and independent course of Mr. Stebbins, and the reasons which induced him to cut loose from the peace-at-any-price influences … should now receive a hearty indorsement from the War Democracy and all other Union men of that District,” The Times reported after the convention. “With proper effort, he may be returned to finish the term which he has so honorably begun.” He declined to do so.

Stebbins continued as a leading financier in New York, including serving on boards of directors of major corporations. In late 1860s and 1870s he was president of the city Park Commission which oversaw Central Park,  a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History, president of the Academy of Music, and commodore of the New York Yacht Club. 

He died in 1881 at the age of 70.

Edward H. Smith: 

He Hated Slavery

Aside from being a well-known Ridgefield businessman of his era, Edward H. Smith had two unusual and noteworthy characteristics: He was an impassioned orator against slavery and he died on the same day as his wife.

Although a native of Westport, Edward H. Smith was a descendant of one of the founders of Ridgefield. He was born in 1827 and grew up in New York City and in Wilton. When he was 17, he went to Mobile, Ala., to be a clerk in the store of a clothing manufacturer who was a relative. He was there for five years, and witnessed slavery for the first time; he never forgot the scenes and the pain he saw.

In 1848, he returned to Wilton but moved to Ridgefield a year later to work as a clerk. 

He soon started a general store on Main Street, something that was then called a “mercantile,” and owned the business for more than 40 years. He also became a partner with D. Smith Sholes in operating the Ridgefield Shirt factory.

During the Civil War, Smith served as a first lieutenant in the Connecticut National Guard — by then he was probably too old to be on the battlefields of the war. He was, however, a strong believer in the cause of the Union.

A member and president of the Ridgefield Debating Society, Smith was known for his oratory skills. He used those skills on May 30, 1893, Memorial Day — then called Decoration Day — to recall the horrors of slavery. In his oration, delivered in Town Hall, he seemed to criticize not only his country’s founding fathers but also its religious leaders. And he praised the attack of the South on Fort Sumter as a “messenger from God.”

Excerpts from his speech were included in an 1899 biographical history of Fairfield County. 

“A little over a quarter of a century ago,” Smith told Ridgefielders,  “there were over three million men, women and children, slaves in this Christian land of ours; men who had no rights to the fruits of their labor and toil; men without a right, without a hope, sold at the auction block like so many articles of merchandise; wives separated from their husbands, children from their parents —   lovely girls, as fair in face and form as any within this hall today, bought and sold as young cattle in the streets.

“I speak of scenes and events which I have repeatedly witnessed in the streets of Mobile and New Orleans, and therefore speak feelingly.”

The founding fathers were a party to slavery, he said. “Our forefathers were partakers in this great wrong in the earlier days of the Republic, and only abandoned it when they found it unprofitable.”  He maintained that in the past, “from the press, yes, even the pulpit, argument and appeal ...  in defense of the doctrine of the right of the stronger to enslave the weaker, were listened to with pleasure and applauded as the words of wisdom falling from the lips of experience.”  

He recalled that some of the nation’s leaders considered it “the loftiest act of patriotism to intercept and return, under that flag, the poor fugitive in his midnight flight to liberty or death.” 

He bemoaned the fact that “a great nation, boasting of its religion and independence, had become so debauched by its professional politicians that it seemed almost ready to adopt the sentiment which might be inferred from the decisions of the highest tribunals of the land.  Witness the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott case — ‘the black man had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.’”

The outbreak of the Civil War was heaven-sent, Smith suggested. “I wonder at God’s goodness to us as a nation, and feel that we ought reverently to thank God for that first shot fired at Sumter’s battlements — for it was the forerunner of a doomed system, announcing a day of deliverance; the breaking of the bonds; the opening of the prison doors that the captives might go free; that no more should be witnessed the scarred and bleeding backs of its victims, no more the sobs of the mother, the wail of anguish from the bruised heart of the father, as they saw their little ones torn from their embrace and home.”

“Reverently I can but feel that that shot was a messenger from God, proclaiming that no more should the soil of his chosen land be pressed by the foot of a slave, but by men, free men, no more to be called chattels, articles of merchandise... What a triumph for humanity! What a victory for justice!”

Edward Smith was active in the civic and social life of Ridgefield. He served as a state representative in 1859 as a Republican and in 1873 as what was called a “Liberal Republican.” He was a member of the Board of Selectmen, president of the Ridgefield Agricultural Society, and head of the Ridgefield Improvement Society. He was active in the Masons and St. Stephen’s Church where he was a warden and the parish treasurer.

But it was in his departure from this world that he gained his final distinction.  In February and March of 1905, an outbreak of “La Grippe” — as the flu was called — occurred in Ridgefield and at least five people died from it. Both Edward and his wife, Delia Gregory Smith, came down with La Grippe and both developed pneumonia because of it. They died on Feb. 24, 1905. He was 77 and she, 76. They had been married for 56 years. 

Gen. David Perry: 

A Notable Portrait

Brigadier General David Perry is believed to be the only Ridgefield native who rose to the rank of a general in the U.S Army. Consequently, he is probably also the highest-ranking military officer to have been born here.

He was, according to a 1908 Ridgefield Press profile, “best known for his bravery as an Indian fighter, although he had served with distinction in the Civil War.” 

Today, however, he may be better known for a portrait that was painted of him.

Perry was born in Ridgefield on June 11, 1841, a son of Samuel and Sophia Perry, and attended the private school on Main Street operated by the Rev. David H. Short. He enlisted from New Jersey, receiving his commission as a second lieutenant in the 1st Cavalry in March 1862. Three months later he was promoted to first lieutenant, and to captain in November 1864. 

During the Civil War, he fought in many  battles and skirmishes with the Army of the Potomac.

After the war, he spent nearly two decades in the West, fighting American Indians. In 1873, he gained some distinction by capturing Captain Jack and his band of Modoc Indians in California after they had killed Gen. E.R.S. Canby and some peace commissioners. Captain Perry was wounded by the Modocs in one of the engagements. 

Perry fought against the Nez Perce under Chief Joseph in 1877 and in the Bannock campaign in 1878. He was also a commander of Fort Custer in Montana.

He was breveted — promoted — three times due to gallantry in battle, once in the Civil War and twice in the American Indian Wars.

He became a lieutenant colonel of the 10th Cavalry in 1891 and colonel of the all-black 9th Cavalry in 1896. At the time of his retirement in 1904, he was promoted to brigadier general. 

In 1907, Perry had his portrait painted by Robert Henri, a noted American painter and teacher. Henri was a leader of the Ashcan School movement of American realism that portrayed scenes in the daily life, usually of poor people. The portrait of Perry sold at a 1992 auction for $28,600 ($48,000 in today’s dollars) and is now in the collection of the Denver Art Museum.

Perry died in Washington, D.C., in 1908 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. His wife, S. Louise Hoyt, who died in 1938, is buried beside him.

Charles E. Jennings: 
A Boy of War

Charles Jennings is one of the least known and yet more unusual servicemen buried in Ridgefield. Unlike most who joined the military, Charles Jennings was barely 16 years old when he signed up with the Union Navy. And he wasn’t much older when he died in the service of his country — the facts of which are incorrectly reported on his official Civil War monument.

The Civil War has been called “The Boys’ War” because so many soldiers were younger teenagers. Some experts estimate around 100,000 enlistees in the Union and Confederate armies  were 15 years old or younger; 300 were younger than 13. Most of these teenagers joined as musicians, especially drummers. But Charles Jennings was old enough that he was assigned to do a man’s work aboard large vessels.

The Ridgefield town clerk’s records report that Charles Edgar Jennings was born on March 23, 1848, in “School District Number 11,” which was the Florida District, north of Branchville. His parents were Anson and Nancy Jane Jennings “of Reading.” The 1860 census lists Anson as a farmer in Redding (but the town has no record of Charles’s birth).

Why would Ridgefield record the birth of someone from Redding? Maps published in 1856 and 1867 suggest that the Jennings family lived on Simpaug Turnpike, just north of the railroad trestle; that’s in Redding, but it’s right on the Ridgefield town line. Back then towns often shared schooling duties near their borders, and it is probable that the Jennings’ family was served by the Florida School District; the Florida Schoolhouse on the corner of Florida and Florida Hill Roads was closer to their house than any schoolhouse in Redding (or Ridgefield). 

It was an official of the Florida District who reported Charles’s birth, probably expecting that Charles would be a future pupil. And it’s quite likely that Charles did get his education at the Florida Schoolhouse.

What’s more, it’s quite possible that, although the house was in Redding, much of the Jennings farm was in Ridgefield since the best land in their neighborhood was to the west, not east, of their house — territory along the Norwalk River in Ridgefield.

Charles’s father, Anson,  died March 3, 1861, at the age of 60. He must have known the end was coming, for he made out a will a month earlier, leaving his estate to his wife, Nancy Jane, and their children, Robert, Charles, Henry, and Mary Ann. 

Three years later, on May 3, 1864, Charles enlisted in the Navy. He was 16 years, 4 months and 21 days old, reports Charlene Henderson, who has researched Charles’s record to confirm that information on his Civil War monument is incorrect. Henderson specializes in the 17th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry regiment, to which, according to his monument, Charles belonged. She discovered that Charles E. Jennings of Redding was confused with Sgt. Charles A. Jennings of Georgetown — whose grave in Branchville Cemetery has no military marker at all, even though Charles A. was seriously wounded at Chancellorsville.

The minimum age for enlisting in the Civil War was 18, with parental permission. It is not known whether Charles lied about his age, whether military officials simply ignored his age — which often happened  —  or whether he had permission from his mother. Even young men between 18 and 20 years old were supposed to have parental permission.

Jennings was apparently assigned to two ships, the first of which was the U.S.S. New Hampshire, a former 74-gun “ship of the line” then being used as a supply vessel. He was then assigned to the U.S.S. Princeton, a former gun boat stationed in Philadelphia Harbor and used  as a “receiving ship” where new recruits were housed. At Philadelphia, aboard the U.S.S. Massachusetts, Jennings died on March 27, 1865, of what his military record filed with the City of Philadelphia called “remittent fever,” but which his death record in the Redding town hall says was typhoid fever.

The Philadelphia death record says he was 21 years old, but in fact he was just four days past his 17th birthday.

Charles Jennings is buried next to his father in Florida Cemetery in Ridgefield, just a few hundred yards down the Simpaug Turnpike from his childhood home.  The simple  veterans monument that marks his grave incorrectly calls him a sergeant, the rank earned by Charles A. Jennings (Charles E. Jenning’s rank was “landsman,” the most basic Navy level given to those with no experience at sea.) The monument also had Charles A. Jennings’ military unit in the Union Army instead of Charles E. Jennings’ naval assignment. It correctly states he was 17 years old. 

Right behind the war monument — so close that it is difficult to read — is the family’s gravestone for him. Its epitaph says he died “In sacrifice to his country.”

His mother eventually sold the farm and moved to New Jersey with her younger children Henry and Mary, Henderson reports. By 1900 she was living with her daughter, Mary, and son-in-law, in Lakewood, N.J. and died Sept. 10, 1900 in nearby Belmar.

While few other details of Charles Jennings’ life and service are known, he was probably like many other boys who enlisted with what a New York Times writer called “hopes of adventure and glory.”   Cate Lineberry said in a 2011 op-ed piece that although both the Union and Confederate Armies had rules designed to prevent children from enlisting, “that didn’t stop those who wanted to be a part of the action. Some enlisted without their parents’ permission and lied about their ages or bargained with recruiters for a trial period….Most of the youngest boys became drummers, messengers and orderlies, but thousands of others fought alongside the men.”

At least 48 boys under 18 — one of whom was only 11 years old — received the Congressional Medal of Honor. One nine-year-old grew up to become a major general in the U.S. Army.

Samuel A. Coe: 

‘Mayor of Ridgebury’

Many men who lost an arm in battle might figure that’s enough public service. Not “Uncle Sam” Coe. The battle-worn veteran of the Civil War came to Ridgefield and led an unusually long life of helping his community in many ways — so much so, he was often called the “mayor of Ridgebury.”

“To say that he was much revered, respected and beloved in no way expresses how deeply the inhabitants of Ridgefield felt about Mr. Coe,” wrote The Ridgefield Press at his death in 1936. “His friends are legion, and they all mourn as one the passing of a true friend.”

Samuel Augustus Coe was born in 1843 in the Peach Lake section of North Salem, the son of Quakers whose ancestors helped settle that town  in the early 1700s. (His great-great-grandmother was said to be the first white child born in the Oblong, the 1.75-mile-wide by 50-mile-long slice of Connecticut ceded to New York in 1731.)

At the age of 19, he enlisted in the Union Army at Brewster, and became a member of the 6th Heavy Artillery, Company G, of New York Volunteers. 

“Mr. Coe saw hard service in the Maryland and Virginia campaigns,” The Press reported. “In different battles he was near death many times. Bullets struck his clothing, one burned his neck, another his cheek, and another cut a furrow through his hair, but no blood was drawn then. Later, he was wounded at the siege of Petersburg in May 1864 where he was under fire for 30 days.”

That wound at Petersburg caused the loss of part of his left arm, “thus depriving him of his dream of becoming a shoemaker.”

He was taken to New York City to recuperate under the care of the Sisters of Charity, an order of nuns founded by St. Elizabeth Seton (Ridgefield’s church named for her is just up the road from Coe’s Ridgebury farm). 

After the war, Coe married Susan Cable of North Salem and by around 1890 the couple had moved to Ridgebury, buying a 100-acre farm at the corner of Ridgebury Road. Their house on Old

Stagecoach Road had been built in 1782 by Captain Henry Whitney, whose son-in-law, David Hunt, established a Ridgebury-to-Norwalk stage line that left from the Whitney homestead at 2:30 in the morning. That house later became the home of Daniel and Louise McKeon, who called their spread Arigideen Farm. It’s now the equestrian Double H Farm, whose owner moved the enlarged Whitney/Coe/McKeon house to face Ridgebury Road at the corner of Old Stagecoach.

Coe became very active in his new community. He was a Ridgefield selectman for the eight years from 1894 to 1902, a state representative from 1911 to 1913, and a member of the Board of Assessors for 20 years. He served on the Board of Relief  — the elected agency that heard complaints that taxes were too high or unfairly levied — until he was 90 years old.  

He was a deacon of the Ridgebury Congregational Church for 35 years, and religiously passed the collection plate — a long-handled one — until a few years before his death. He retired from public service in 1933 and moved to Patterson, N.Y., to live with a friend. He died in 1936 at the age of 92.

“Mr. Coe retained the vigor of his youth for many years and in his declining years was a man of unusual vitality,” The Danbury News said at his death. “His eyesight and hearing remained as keen as when he was a boy and a month ago, he slapped his Ridgefield friends on the back as unceremoniously and with as much vim as he had done 20 years before.”

He was also sharp of mind, The News said. “He recalled the events of bygone days as clearly as if they had happened yesterday and kept in close touch with events of the modern world. On his last chat with friends in Ridgefield, he talked with heightened interest of the 1936 presidential election campaign. He was a Republican and expected to cast his 1936 vote for the GOP.”

He didn’t make it to the polls, however, dying in April. 

Dr. John G. Perry: 

Letter-Writing Civil War Surgeon

A young Harvard-educated surgeon from a well-to-do Boston family experienced the bloody horrors and the amazing heroism of the Civil War and described what he saw in letters to his fiancee and then bride. Forty years later, his wife turned dozens of those letters into a book that is still widely quoted — and reprinted — a century later.

  Dr. John G. Perry underwent experiences — including being trapped in the New York City Draft Riots — that seem unimaginable today. He later became a top New York City surgeon and had a summer home — the predecessor of Sunset Hall — on West Mountain for more than 20 years. He was one of many New York City physicians  around the turn of the 20th Century who found Ridgefield a healthful place to take a break. 

John Gardner Perry was born in 1840 in Boston. His father, Dr. Marshall Sears Perry (1805-1859), was a well-respected community physician while his mother, Abby Stimson Perry (1816-1857) “exerted a particularly strong influence on the moral and spiritual character of her son,” according to a 1918 biography. 

While his parents oversaw a top-notch education for their boy that included private schooling and attending Boston Latin high school, they also grounded him in the “real world” by sending him each summer to work on a farm. He said later that his love of nature and country life came from these summers; it may have led to his decision to buy an old farm in Ridgefield.

Perry had always been interested in the profession of his father and, as a boy, was called “the little doctor.” In 1858 he entered Harvard College but soon transferred  to study at Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School. He then entered Harvard Medical School.

While he was studying medicine, the Union Army issued a call for surgeons and, wishing to serve his country and gain surgical experience, Perry enlisted in April 1862 at the age of 22 as a contract assistant surgeon — because he did not yet have his medical degree, he could not be  commissioned.  

He was sent to northern Virginia where he treated countless badly injured soldiers, including Confederate prisoners. By August  Perry fell ill from the exhaustion of working almost non-stop

under trying combat conditions, and was sent home. During this break he finished his Harvard medical school studies and graduated with the class of 1863. He also married his longtime sweetheart, fellow Bostonian Martha Derby Rogers, in March of 1863. He returned to the war a month later, now a commissioned officer in the 20th Massachusetts Regiment.

During his periods of service, Perry wrote scores of letters to his fiance and then bride, describing his experiences. Forty years later, Martha Perry came across them in “a much weather-beaten trunk, which since the Civil War has travelled from one attic to another.”

She got permission from her husband to put together the book, “Letters from A Surgeon of the Civil War.” Published in 1906, the book was widely read, has been often quoted by Civil War historians over the past century, and is today still available in many reprint editions. 

“Letters” offers a well-written, frequently dramatic look at the often heroic and horrible results of combat. It also describes in non-technical language how the wounded were treated. 

Here is a sampling of Perry’s experiences:

• “I hear that the surgeon who served before me, while dressing a [Confederate] soldier’s wound, laid the knife for a moment on the bed. The man seized it and made a lunge at the doctor, but instead of killing him, as he had intended, only ran it into his arm; whereupon the doctor instantly shot him. I suspect that the surgeon may have been rough in this instance, possibly intentionally so; I am careful, however, not to leave my instruments within reach of these prisoners, although they seem friendly and I do not fear them. —May 18, 1862, Chesapeake Hospital at Fortress Monroe
  
• “This afternoon I collected all my convalescents in the kitchen of the cottage, placed them about a blazing fire — for it was chilly and raining hard outside — and started the singing of Methodist hymns. The music caught like an epidemic, and soon from every side came doctors, nurses, patients, negroes, until we had a rousing chorus. All of them sang with their whole souls, each one asking for his favorite hymn, and the concert ended with ‘Old Hundred.’ How I did enjoy it!” — June 15, 1862, Chesapeake Hospital
  
• “A new contingent to-day of sick and wounded; in fact, the men arrived in such numbers that we laid them on the grass and dressed their wounds there. I was obliged to perform an operation on one man and cut off two of his fingers. He sat up perfectly straight and did not wince a particle. I called him a ‘man,’ for he truly deserved the title, though he, poor fellow, was a mere boy of eighteen years.” —July 1, 1862, Chesapeake Hospital
  
• “Home! Oh, how that word still haunts me! Yet I am calmer now and take the situation more reasonably; but an awful sinking at the heart still sweeps over me, and I can easily understand how soldiers die of homesickness.” — Sept. 26, 1863, Culpeper, Va. (Many doctors back then believed both nostalgia and homesickness were deadly, says one scholar who quotes Perry and adds, “The idea that nostalgia and homesickness were lethal illustrates the fact that physically unwounded soldiers suffered debilitating symptoms, making them unfit for duty.”)
  
• “We had a drunken row in camp last night, owing to some villain’s having sold whiskey to the men, and it was one o’clock before the noisy ones were secured and all became quiet. These conscripts, or rather substitutes, behave disgracefully, deserting at every possible chance, even to the enemy. Notwithstanding that two who belonged to our regiment were shot, thirty-four deserted immediately after. One fellow, having failed to escape in the direction of his home, attempted to go over to the enemy, but was prevented. He then shot his finger off, with the hope of being sent to the hospital, where the opportunities for desertion are greater, but the result is that he will serve with one finger less.” —Oct. 1, 1863, Culpeper, Va.
  
• “Colonel Mallon was at that time with me in the rear, for, as the brigade had made a breastwork of the railroad embankment, he could not be in front; and we were lying side by side, flat on the ground, so as to be out of range of the enemy’s guns, when the colonel, who was very fond of Major Abbott, said he must take a look round and see if he were safe. I begged him not to, saying that he would surely be shot, but he answered, ‘No, I cannot stand the suspense, and it will take but a moment’; where upon he rose, and was instantly shot through the abdomen. I dragged him to a little muddy stream — the only place of safety — where the poor fellow lay with water almost running down his throat. He lived until the fight was almost over, and finally expired in my arms. He was just married.” —Oct. 22, 1863, at Auburn, on the banks of the Bull Run River. (In a footnote, Mrs. Perry adds that “Major Abbott was shot through the body, and lived for about eight hours after. He left all his money to the widows and orphans of the regiment.”)
  
• “Exhaustion and confusion, worse confounded. Although perfectly well, I am tired and hot, having slept only a couple of hours out of the last forty… the thought of sleep makes me absolutely silly. I now sit on the ground in the woods, leaning against a log and writing on my knee. I am surrounded by soldiers, bon-fires, and kicking horses — but out of their reach, I assure you; dust is sweeping over me like smoke; my face is black with dirt and perspiration, clothes soiled and torn almost to pieces. I am too tired to sleep, too tired to stand, and should dislike to have you see me just now. Although we have been steadily banging away at each other for a week, neither side has gained much advantage. The enemy has gradually fallen back, but each day shows a bold front.” — May 8, 1864, Cold Harbor, Va.
  
• “It seems to me I am quite callous to death now, and that I could see my dearest friend die without much feeling. This condition tells a long story which, under other circumstances, could scarcely be imagined. During the last three weeks I have seen probably no less than two thousand deaths, and among them those of many dear friends. I have witnessed hundreds of men shot dead, have walked and slept among them, and surely I feel it possible to die myself as calmly as any — but enough of this. The fight is now fearful, and ambulances are coming in with great rapidity, each bearing its suffering load.” —May 24, 1864, near Hanover Junction, Va.
  
• “Every day there is a fight, and every day the hospital is again filled. For
  four days now we have been operating upon the men wounded in one battle, which lasted only about two hours; but the wounds were more serious than those from former engagements. I am heart-sick over it all. If the Confederates lost in each fight the same number as we, there would be more chance for us; but their loss is about one man to our five, from the fact that they never leave their earth-works, whereas our men are obliged to charge even when there is not the slightest chance of taking them. Several times after capturing these works, our troops were unsupported and had to evacuate immediately, with great loss. The men are becoming discouraged, but there is plenty of fight in them yet.”  —June 4, 1864, Cold Harbor, Va.
  
• “We have had thirty of our division wounded to-day by shell which the Confederates manage to throw into our pits, but we are successful in dropping some into theirs also. The heat is intolerable, and the roads are covered with dust six or eight inches deep, which every gust of wind sweeps up, covering everything with a dirty, white coating.” —June 10, 1864, Cold Harbor
  
• “I had to follow the hospital wagons, look after the stores, and attend the sick and wounded in the ambulances. These wagons took the same route as the troops but kept far in their rear. The heat each day was intense, and the dust beyond any expression of which I am capable; but suffice it to say that most of the time I could not even see the head of my horse.” —June 21, 1864 near Petersburg, Va.
  

By the middle of August 1864, Martha Perry had fallen seriously ill and Dr. Perry was discharged from the Army to go home and care for her. After her recovery, the Perrys settled in New

York City where the doctor became  well-known for gynecological surgery and treatment of diseases of the thyroid and pituitary glands. He spent some time as a surgeon at the New York State Woman’s Hospital in Manhattan, now part of Mount Sinai Hospital.

Among his patients in the early 1870s was Salmon P. Chase (1808-1873), chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court who had been secretary of the treasury under Abraham Lincoln.

Perhaps recalling his childhood summers on Massachusetts farms, Dr. Perry decided to buy a summer place in Ridgefield. In March 1891 he paid Stephen Burt $1,100 for about seven acres and buildings on Old West Mountain Road. The Burt family had farmed this land since the 1700s. In the coming years, John and Martha bought more adjacent land.

It is unclear whether Perry built a new country home or modified the old Burt farmhouse, but his “cottage” was considered a showplace at the turn of the 20th Century. A picture of the house, taken in the late 1890s by Marie Kendall, shows a residence more modest than the 22-room mansion called Sunset Hall that is now on the property. Sunset Hall may incorporate parts of the Perrys’ place, or may have been built from scratch by Ambassador James Stokes, who bought the estate from the Perrys — by then including some 27 acres — in 1912.

Dr. Perry was among the physicians cited in an 1894 New York Times article, headlined

“Doctors Recommend Ridgefield.” The writer maintained, “That which has contributed largely to the success of Ridgefield as a summer resort is the influence of many of the prominent physicians of New York, who have induced their patients to pass the summer here.” 

Perry left Ridgefield after he had left New York. By 1912, he and Martha had retired to a

brownstone on Commonwealth Avenue back in their native Boston where she died in 1916 and he in 1926 at the age of 86.

John Perry witnessed untold suffering during the Civil War, but also experienced it himself well north of the battlefields. On June 15, 1863, somewhere near Fredericksburg, Va., he fell from his horse, badly breaking his leg. “Seeing the sole of my boot facing me, I knew what had happened — a multiple fracture,” he wrote Martha.

He was put in an ambulance where, for some reason, he was left for more than 24 hours. “The next day after my accident a wounded officer was placed beside me in the ambulance, who died during the following night, and to add to my torments, the body of this poor man incessantly rolled over and against me, rendering my condition absolutely unendurable.”

After pleading for assistance, he was eventually moved to a railroad freight car and shipped to a hospital in Alexandria, Va. There a surgeon removed his boot, revealing “a black and angry-looking limb,” Perry said.  The surgeon quickly declared, “It is gangrene and the leg must be amputated!"

Perry refused amputation, maintaining his leg was just swollen and dirty. “Determined to save that leg, and to avoid any serious conflict, [I] felt that I must, as it were, escape from the hospital. I called one of the nurses to me, told the circumstances, and asked her to find two trusty

men, whom I would pay liberally, to carry me on my stretcher to a steam-boat bound for Washington. This she agreed to do; and that very evening I was carefully lifted through a window and placed on the deck of a boat which was to sail in the morning.”

Arriving in Washington, he convinced a doctor at a military hospital to send him to New York where he hoped to get his leg properly cared for. In New York, however, “one physician after another was called to set my poor long-suffering leg, but each left with the same response, ‘I am not a surgeon-doctor; call this one and that.’ At last, in sheer desperation, I asked my wife’s brother to find splints, plaster, and bandages, and we, together, set my leg.”

But the tale doesn’t end there. During his recuperation in Manhattan, John and Martha Perry found themselves in the middle of the famous Draft Riots of July 1863 (featured in the 2002 Martin Scorsese film, “Gangs of New York”).

“About noon that same day we became aware of a confused roar,” Martha writes in the book. “As it increased, I flew to the window, and saw rushing up Lexington Avenue, within a few paces of our house, a great mob of men, women, and children; the men, in red working shirts, looking fairly fiendish as they brandished clubs, threw stones, and fired pistols…

“The mass of humanity soon passed, setting fire to several houses quite near us, for no other reason, we heard afterward, than that a policeman, whom they suddenly saw and chased, ran inside one of the gates, hoping to find refuge. The poor man was almost beaten to death, and the house, with those adjoining, burned.”

As the days of rioting continued, she witnessed more fires and “men, both colored and white, were murdered within two blocks of us — some being hung to the nearest lamp-post and others shot,” Martha said. “An army officer was walking in the street near our house, when a rioter was seen to kneel on the sidewalk, take aim, fire, and kill him, then coolly start on his way unmolested.”

At one point, “a crowd of boys arrived with stout sticks, threw stones at our house, called for the ‘niggers,’ and then rushed on. This added to my alarm, I having heard that a rush of street arabs always preceded an attack by the mob. Parties of Irishmen passed and pointed to our house, and a boy ran by shouting, ‘We’ll have fun up here to-night.’ My heart felt overloaded as I looked at John in his helpless condition. What were we to do?”

Fortunately, patrols of citizens and police  protected their neighborhood that night and soon federal troops arrived to quell the riots. John was unaware of much of the goings on; Martha kept him away from windows and did not reveal the seriousness of their situation, feeling it would interfere with his recovery.

Ninety days after he signed himself out on medical leave, Dr. Perry returned to his unit in Washington where he had to meet with the surgeon-general to be approved to return to service. He hid his crutches so that the surgeon-general would not send him to the “invalid corps” and he “managed with great difficulty” to walk unaided across the superior officer’s office. His infirmity went undetected.

Eventually his leg fully healed and for the rest of his life, John Perry’s favorite form of exercise was walking.

(Note: Dr. John Perry was not related to the Perry family that produced three generations of respected Ridgefield physicians, Dr. David Perry, son Dr. Nehemiah Perry and grandson Dr. Nehemiah Perry Jr.)