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).

E. P. Dutton: 

A Devout Publisher

E. P. Dutton has left the world with countless books and Ridgefield with one of its finest mansions. The founder of the publishing company that bore his name for more than a century also contributed considerably to bringing the Ridgefield school system into the 20th century.

Born in New Hampshire in 1831, Edward Payson Dutton grew up in Boston, graduated from Boston Latin high school, and was supposed to enter Harvard when, dreading having to study more Greek, he convinced his father to bring him into his dry goods business. 

He worked there a couple years when a friend who had a book store introduced him to bookselling. 

When only 21, he and the friend formed Ide and Dutton, booksellers. They did well and decided to move into publishing as well as selling; their first book was Horace Mann’s lectures on education, which became a big seller. In 1858, Dutton bought out the business, which became E.P. Dutton & Company, and which in 1869 he moved to New York. 

In 1923, shortly after his death at the age of 92, Dutton was called by The New York Times “the dean of a daring group of leaders of the book industry” who had made New York City the literary capital of America. He “was a link between a half-forgotten day when Boston held up her queenly head as the mistress of letters on this side of the Atlantic, and these new times when a writer’s door of fame is planted firmly in the rocky soil of Manhattan.” 

When Dutton came to New York, there were only two publishing houses in the city; when he died, there were 1,200.

In addition to the longstanding E.P. Dutton imprint, he had early on bought Ticknor & Fields, a Boston publisher, and acquired American rights to the British series, Everyman’s Library, under which his company turned out scores of affordable titles. 

Dutton published more than 10,000 different titles during his life. When he died, there were 4,000 active titles in his company’s catalogue. 

Many of his authors were leading writers of their era, including G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, John Dewey, and Algernon Blackwood.

He led his company for 71 years; “probably no other publishing house in the country was under the direct guidance of its founder for so long a period,” The Times reported.

In the early 1890s,  Dutton decided to build a house on High Ridge, and hired Ridgefield's top builder to do it. “Big Jim” Kennedy spent two years carefully erecting the place, which still stands at 63 High Ridge. (In the 1970s, reported historian Dick Venus, someone did a surveyor's sighting from the front door to the back door of this house and found less than a quarter inch difference, despite the huge weight of the mansion whose roof alone is nearly the size of a football field.) 

Venus remembered as a young boy seeing Dutton riding his buckboard, pulled by a beautiful mahogany bay. Dutton had a wide leather belt across his lap. “I learned later that the strap was to prevent him from falling from the wagon,” Venus wrote, “for even at his advanced age, he drove at a very fast pace. Come to think of it, he must have pioneered in the use of the seat belt.”

Venus also told of races down Main Street that Dutton would participate in around the turn of the 20th Century, along with his friends, George Haven, Barton Hepburn and Dr. Edwin Van Saun. “Like his friends, Edward Dutton was an avid horseman and his horse were considered to be among the very best.”

A deeply religious Episcopalian who was a benefactor of St. Stephen’s,  Dutton would often drive his horse and buggy into the woods  where he would park, meditate, and read prayers in his breviary.  

In 1912, he joined others in contributing the money to buy the East Ridge land on which the

big, brick Benjamin Franklin Grammar School, later to be Ridgefield High School, was built in 1915. In her autobiography, “Memories,” Laura Curie Allee Shields tells how her first husband, Dr. William Allee, approached Dutton 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.)

Dutton’s firm continued on until the 1990s when it was acquired by Penguin Putnam, which still uses the Dutton imprint on about 40 books per year, half of them fiction and half non-fiction.

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.

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.