Charlotte Wakeman, 

The First Superintendent

As of 2019, Ridgefield has had 19 school superintendents. Only three were women, but among those was the very first superintendent: Charlotte Wakeman. After she left in 1921, it was 85 years before Ridgefield hired another woman for the job.

An impressive person who was said to be close to six feet tall, “Biddy” Wakeman was remembered not only as a leader in bringing modern education to Ridgefield, but also as a disciplinarian and one who had a fondness for huge hats.

A native of  Copake, N.Y., Charlotte J. Wakeman was born in 1877 and grew up in Danbury. She came to Ridgefield in 1906 to be principal of and a teacher at the Center School on Bailey Avenue. 

In 1915, Ridgefield’s school system was considerably modernized with the addition of the Benjamin Franklin Grammar School, to which her classes were moved, and the opening of Alexander Hamilton High School at what had been the Center School. A year later, the district modernized even further with the creation of the job of school superintendent to oversee all the teachers and other staff. Wakeman held the position and at the same time continued to serve as a teacher. 

Wakeman was one of a number of Ridgefielders — educators, parents and “summer people” — who were leaders in modernizing the schools and moving the curriculum into the 20th Century. When she arrived here, the town had no high school. After Hamilton High opened, Wakeman then focused efforts on making it better. Even students chipped in: The girls in the home economics class under a Mrs. Myer created a “for a better high school” fund to raise money for the school.  

“I bought three hundred-pound bags of raw peanuts,” Wakeman recalled in 1968 when she was 90 years old. “After school the girls under the supervision of Mrs. Myer shelled those peanuts and salted them. Then they sold them at entertainments in the town hall and took orders for them. When they were finished with that, they gave the money made from sales to the Board of Education ‘for a better high school.’”

The girls also encouraged their mothers “to make cakes for several cake sales. They did many other things and gave the profits to the fund.”

Wakeman was known for keeping her classes orderly. Tabby Carboni, who had her as a teacher in 1912 and 1913, recalled that “she gave me the ruler many times!” Carboni added, however, “I wasn’t bad — there were others who got it a lot more than I did.”

She was also known for her hats. During her career in Ridgefield, Wakeman was photographed several times wearing enormous hats — in one picture, the hat appears four times the width of her head, and nearly twice as high. They were no doubt a style of the day, but she would don them indoors, too, even for group photographs where everyone else was hatless.

After World War I, the town was going through a protracted and sometimes bitter dispute about the modernization of  schools. Leading the support for a conservative approach was school

board Chairman Richard Osborn, owner of the Ridgefield Supply Company. As chairman, “he tangled repeatedly” with  Wakeman, and with Dr. William H. Allee, “her sponsor and supporter,” The Ridgefield Press later reported. (Dr. Allee, covered in a separate Who Was Who profile, was perhaps the most active worker for better education in Ridgefield early in the 20th Century.)

By 1921, Wakeman had had enough fighting and resigned. She took a job teaching English at the high school in Mount Vernon, N.Y., remaining there until her retirement in 1937. 

However, she continued to live in a small house on Main Street for some years,   commuting to Mount Vernon, and maintained contact with her former staff members over the years. In 1937, Ridgefield teachers and friends honored Wakeman on her Mount Vernon retirement, holding a tea for her at the Book Barn on Wilton Road. The attendees included a who’s who of 20th Century Ridgefield educators: Mary Regan, Mary Moylan, Marie Kilcoyne, Mary and Elizabeth Boland, Ruth Wills, Eleanor Burdick, Josephine and Alice Hearst, Margaret and Agnes Carroll, Catherine O’Hearn, Grace White, Isabel O’Shea, Linda Davies, Francis J. Bassett, Charles D. Crouchley, Levio Zandri, and Clifford Holleran.

Although she held no academic degrees, Wakeman had studied at Columbia, Yale, Dartmouth, and New York University. She was also a founder of the American Woman’s Association, a once active suffragist organization. She died in 1969 at the age of 91. 

One of the few Ridgefielders alive by the turn of the 21st Century to remember Biddy Wakeman was Mary Creagh, who recalled her as her school’s principal in 1918. “I remember I thought she was very tall and imposing, like a ship in full sail,” said Miss Creagh. “When I met her years later, she didn’t seem that tall at all.”

Perhaps she had taken off her hat.

The Allee Sisters

This charming portrait shows the Allee sisters, Jean Harriet (left) and Dorothy Diemar (right) with an unnamed nurse, probably around 1916. Jean is holding a monkey and Dorothy, what appears to be a clown  — they may have been favorite toys or just props provided by the photographer, Joseph Hartmann.

The sisters were the daughters of Dr. and Mrs. William Allee, who lived at 304 Main Street at the southern corner of Market Street. After the doctor’s death in 1927, Mrs. Allee married James Van Allen Shields and became Laura Curie Allee Shields. (She wrote a 300+-page autobiography, “Memories,” with many glimpses of early 20th Century Ridgefield.)

Dorothy (1909-96) married August J. Detzer Jr. (1898-1976), a Navy captain who served in World Wars I and II, as well as Korea, and owned radio stations WINE-AM and WGHF-FM in Brookfield. (WINE is still around at 940 kHz, but WGHF is now WRKI, long called “I-95 Radio.”) The Detzers lived in the family homestead at 304 Main Street for some years.

Jean (1908-90) married Graham Ford Dawson (1910-95), and moved to New Zealand, where she spent the rest of her life.

The Allee/Shields house still stands (and was just sold in November). Laura Shields lived there until her death in 1968 and so did her daughter Dorothy and son-in-law. After Capt. Detzer’s death, Dorothy Detzer moved to Bayberry Hill Road, where she lived for many years, and then spent her last years at Casagmo.

Dr. William Allee:
‘Father’ of Ridgefield High

Few individuals have affected the quality of Ridgefield schools a century ago as much as William Hanford Allee, a name all but forgotten today, but renowned and respected early in the 20th Century. 

“Dr. Allee may properly be called the father of Ridgefield High School,” The Ridgefield Press said at his death in April 1927. “He saw the need of such an institution in town. Although he met with strong opposition, he well knew the justice of the cause. Patiently he worked and finally triumphed.” 

A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Dr. Allee was born in 1872, graduated from Brooklyn Polytech and Columbia Medical School, and opened a practice in Wilton around 1905. He and his wife, Laura Curie Allee, came to town in 1906, buying the former Hurlbutt place still standing at Main and Market Streets. 

Dr. Allee was elected to the school board in 1912, serving many years. “He was the guiding hand that created and developed the Hamilton High School (Ridgefield High’s original name) and saw it gradually advance into one of the best small town high schools in the state,” The Press said.

He also led the effort to secure land on East Ridge for a new grammar school and ball field – the Benjamin Franklin Grammar School later became Ridgefield High School. 

He was a true activist for education. 

“When we came to Ridgefield, the town did not provide free textbooks for school children,” his wife, later Laura Curie Allee Shields, wrote in her autobiography, “Memories.” “One day, one of his patients, a poor widow with five or six children, came to see him to ask if something could be done about free books, as it was simply impossible for her to buy books for all her children, either new or second hand. 

“Doctor went to see our town attorney, Judge Light, who, by the way, was a good suffragist, and he told him that Connecticut had two suffrage laws giving votes to women, one on all school questions and the other on libraries.” (This was eight years before the 19th Amendment was ratified.)

Allee decided to employ the little-used right of women to vote on school issues, but also learned that the previous time it was exercised, Ridgefield town officials had “lost” a voting list that contained names of women who officially wanted to be able to vote.

“Dr. Allee spoke before our Equal Franchise League and agitated the question with every woman with whom  he came in contact. Two hundred and six women gave their names to him to be made voters. Doctor made the list in duplicate.” The list was submitted to the town’s registrars of voters and they accepted it.

“The day came for the registrars to meet, and the women went to the town hall to be made voters. Doctor was there, and I will never forget the amazement and confusion of the men that so many women came up to the scratch. The men fumbled around at their desks and whispered and conferred with each other, and finally we were told that the list had been mislaid. 

“Doctor was all ready for them and handed in the duplicate list.” Because the original of the list had been properly received and acknowledged, they were forced to accept the copy.

“Cheers went up. The room was full, as well as the hall outside.  Well, we were all ‘made’ and I assure you it was a sacred rite.” 

A  town meeting Oct. 10, 1912, included, down on the bottom of the agenda, the question of free text books. The meeting began at 3:30 in a packed, standing-room-only town hall — about half of the attendees were women. However, most of those women had family obligations and “the men arranged it that the school business came up last. At 5 o’clock we were still there. Many mothers felt they ought to go home, but didn’t. It was almost 6 before the school business was reached. 

“Dr. Allee moved that the vote be taken by roll call, which was passed. Some women whose names were down toward the end of the list, went home and came back; some whose names came first, voted and then left to take care of the homes of those down at the end of the list. 

“Of course we won. I think if we had ever needed any more convincing arguments for woman suffrage, we had them that day.” 

“Memories” also describes how Dr. Allee went around, drumming up money to buy the East Ridge land for the new grammar school, part of the package that included creating Hamilton High School. Education advocates had agreed to buy the property to help convince the voters to build the town’s first modern school. 

Allee approached book publisher E.P. Dutton of High Ridge for a contribution, explaining the need for a modern school in Ridgefield. 

“Mr. Dutton was most enthusiastic and sympathetic, and he turned to Doctor and said, ‘Suppose we take it to the Lord.’ Doctor told me he knelt down by the couch and made a most beautiful prayer for direction and wisdom. Rising from his knees, he went to his desk and made out a check for $1,000 and, giving it to Doctor, told him, ‘Here, my boy, go to it!” ($1,000 then was worth nearly $25,000 in today’s dollars.) 

“Dr. Allee never rested, but day after day he went to see people from house to house until he had the whole $16,000” needed for the land. The town approved the schools project and both the grammar school and high school opened in 1915. And it was Dr. Allee who suggested the names for both; Hamilton and Franklin were two of his heroes from history.

Though a physician, Allee helped establish and was first president of the Fairfield County Farm Bureau. He was an official of the local, regional and state organizations of the Congregational Church, and his special interest was in youth groups. 

“His love of justice and fair play led him to champion many causes of importance in church and community,” The Press said.

Dr. Allee was 55 when he died in 1927.