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.

Joseph Dunworth: 

Theater and the Elderly 

A half century ago, Joe Dunworth was as well known in Ridgefield as any non-native was. Today, while few people in town may recognize his name, many benefit from two of the causes he championed: local theater and tax relief for the elderly.

Dunworth, who served in several capacities as a volunteer town official, was among the first to propose that Ridgefield help its elderly by providing a flat-out tax cut. His idea was eventually adopted and has provided millions of dollars in tax breaks for over-65 Ridgefielders.

He was also among the three people who founded what is today the Ridgefield Theater Barn, the first successful theatrical group in town.

Joseph Michael Dunworth, born in 1923 in New York City, had an early interest in the sea.

He was valedictorian of his class at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, N.Y., and soon joined the U.S. Navy, serving at the end of World War II and during the Korean War. He remained in the Naval Reserve until 1967, retiring  as a commander. 

After working for McGraw-Hill and the Burnham Corporation, and earning a master’s degree at Columbia, he formed his own company in 1975. Panatech Engineering sold furnaces and other home heating equipment for such companies as Thermo Pride Industries.

He and his wife, Flo, moved to Ridgefield in 1956, buying a West Lane home that had once housed workers on Frederic E. Lewis’s estate, Upagenstit.

By the early 1960s he began to become active in the community. He eventually served on the Big Three town agencies:  the Board of Education for six years — including time as chairman, the Board of Selectmen for four years, and another eight years on the Board of Finance. He ran unsuccessfully for first selectman in 1969. 

For all those offices, Dunworth was a Democrat, but frequently he openly supported Republicans, finally switching parties in 1989. “My enrollment in the Republican Party approximately one year ago was about 40 years overdue,” Dunworth said in 1990 as he was running for state representative (he lost to Democrat Barbara Ireland, the incumbent).

In 1965, Dunworth, along with Evelyn Foley and Patricia DiMuzio,  formed the Ridgefield Workshop for the Performing Arts for not only staging shows but also “fostering and developing creative talent.”  Its first production, one-act performances of “Sorry, Wrong Number,” and the second act from “Auntie Mame,” took place that November. He went on to direct many subsequent

productions including “Bye-Bye Birdie,” “South Pacific,” and “The Pajama Game.” The  workshop grew into today’s Ridgefield Theater Barn, which  has its own venue on Halpin Lane.

He was also active at St. Mary’s Parish, where he was a director of the Catholic Youth Organization.

After the 1990 election, he retired from public life. He moved  to Danbury in 2002 and died there in 2011 at the age of 88.

In 1972, when he was a selectman, Dunworth became perhaps the first local official to actively fight for significant tax relief for the elderly. In July that year he proposed and actually wrote the draft of a proposed state bill that would allow towns to provide tax breaks to homeowners 65 or older.

“Many elderly citizens are finding it difficult and, in some cases impossible, to pay their real property taxes,” he said.  “Many of the elderly are living lives of quiet desperation. Many of them have lived, worked and paid taxes to the community for 40 to 50 years.

“I believe that towns should honor their golden-age citizens, most of whom have ceased benefiting from their tax dollars, and provide them with certain real property tax concessions, thereby endowing them with some dignity and security in their old age.”

Under Dunworth’s proposal, a town could cut a senior citizen’s tax bill in half at age 70 and eliminate property taxes altogether at 75.

That plan did not go over well, probably because of the large amount of money that under-70 taxpayers might have to make up. But a couple years later, Ridgefield adopted Dunworth’s basic concept, creating a set tax cut for those 65 or older.

When the full program began in 1977, senior taxpayers got a $450 annual reduction in their taxes. That $450 was roughly equivalent to $1,850 in today’s dollars. While the dollar amount of the tax break has gradually increased over the years to $1,048 today, thanks to inflation that’s effectively $800 less than what the town granted in 1977.

Joe Dunworth would not be pleased.

Elizabeth Leonard: 

The First First 

In a town where men had been the managers for more than two and a half centuries, Elizabeth Mary Nowotarski Leonard made local history in 1981 when she was elected the first woman first selectman. And her election wasn’t even close, for Mrs. Leonard was already widely popular, famed for her devotion to Ridgefield and its people.  But ironically, the Democrat she beat was also a woman— and a pioneer in her own right.

The New York City native arrived here in 1958, and worked for a decade as the Ridgefield reporter for The Danbury News-Times, often turning out six or seven stories a day. 

Around 1970, she turned the tables; instead of covering politicians, she became one. She left the newspaper and joined the Republican Town Committee, serving as its secretary, and also became vice president of  the Fifth Congressional District Women’s Republican Club. She was named to a Charter Revision Commission, and began a long stint as a lively and witty moderator of Town Meetings. 

In 1976, she overcame opponents on her own town committee, in a caucus and at a primary, to win the nomination for state representative, and went on to defeat Lillian Moorhead in the election.

She served in the State House till 1981, earning the nickname “Studs” for her support of legislation allowing studded snow tires. 

Because of her efforts for improved rail service on the Danbury line, a self-propelled Budd car was named Lizzy in her honor. 

In 1981 she was elected first selectman (she always preferred to be called first selectMAN because that was the traditional title for the job). The woman she beat was Lillian Moorhead again. Moorhead had been a member of the Board of Selectmen since 1973, and was the first woman to serve on that board since the town was founded 258 years earlier.

During Leonard’s six years as chief executive, the town began paramedic service, built more housing for the elderly at Ballard Green, added a sewage treatment plant for Route 7, refurbished athletic fields, rebuilt schools, and began work on the Prospect Ridge congregate housing for the elderly. When she left office, the town had a $700,000 budget surplus.

Ill health, including severe arthritis, forced her to retire from office in 1987, but not from the volunteer Board of Selectmen, where she continued to serve until her death in 1992 at the age of 56. 

Julius Tulipani: 

The American Dream

In reporting the death of Julius Tulipani on New Year’s Day 1983, The Ridgefield Press observed that “he had come to the United States from his native Italy as a boy of 16, achieving thereafter positions of trust and importance in his adopted community.” 

Born in 1890 in Ripe, Tulipani arrived in New York in 1907, and made his way to Ridgefield, including walking up the three-mile hill from Branchville to the village. There, on Easter

Sunday, he joined friends for his first meal in America — he had not eaten in two days because “we didn’t have any money,” he explained later.

Tulipani went to work almost immediately, building roads and other infrastructure for H.B. Anderson’s Port of Missing Men resort on West Mountain (now Eight Lakes Estates). 

“My first home was in a camp,” he told his granddaughter, Beth Tulipani, in a 1977 interview. “I lived in a one-room shack with three or four other boys.” He earned $1.75 a day ($45 in today’s dollars).

Four years later, he began a career of working on local estates, starting out as a coachman, and soon working his way up to a superintendent, a position he held on a half dozen estates for the rest of his career. He did not retire until he was 82 years old. 

He was superintendent of Col. Louis D. Conley’s Outpost Farm in the 1920s, but his longest post, beginning in 1927, was as superintendent of B. Ogden Chisholm’s Wickopee Farm on Peaceable Street, a job which he held until Chisholm’s death in 1944. 

Chisholm was so pleased with his service that he gave his superintendent the portion of his

farm that fronted High Ridge, where Tulipani lived the rest of his life.

He later worked for other estates, including Jack B. Ward’s Ward Acres. 

For most of his life here, he was active in the community. He was president of the Italian-American Club for 30 years — longer than anyone before or since. He was commander of the American Legion three times, and was one of the last living members of the Last Man’s Club of World War I veterans from Ridgefield.

He served as one of the first directors of the Boys Club and an incorporator of the Community Center when it began operations after World War II.He was elected to the Board of Selectmen three times from 1947 to 1953, and had long been a member of the Republican Town Committee. 

An expert gardener, Tulipani was proud of the flowers he raised, once producing an Empire State dahlia measuring a foot in diameter. He began raising flowers while working for Colonel Conley, and continued gardening professionally and for fun throughout his life.

In a 1973 interview when he was retiring, Tulipani told Karl Nash of The Ridgefield Press, “The United States has been good to me in all my life here since 1907. I was out of work in all those 66 years for only a month and a half, and I never had to ask for a job. People always came to me when they needed somebody.”

In 1980, more than 500 people attended a 90th birthday party for Julius Tulipani. There, among several speakers, Judge Romeo G. Petroni described his achievements, saying they symbolized “the ideas of America, freedom and opportunity for all men. His story is the American dream fulfilled.”