The Revs. Leete:  In the Pulpit, 
Before the Class, On the Links

Two leaders in the Congregational Church — father and son — are buried together in the Ridgefield Cemetery.  Descendants of an unusual pioneer and tied to three Connecticut governors, both were accomplished ministers in different realms, and one was even a champion golfer.

William White Leete was born in Windsor, Conn., in 1854, a fifth grandson of William Leete, one of the earliest settlers in Connecticut and the only one to govern both of its colonies. Born around 1613 in Huntingdonshire, England, the progenitor William Leete became a lawyer, serving the bishop of Cambridge at a court that was investigating and prosecuting Puritans. Leete wound up agreeing with the people he was supposed to prosecute, became a Puritan himself,  emigrated to the New World in 1639, and was one of the founders of the town of Guilford, Conn. He later served as governor of the New Haven Colony and after that colony merged with the Connecticut Colony in 1664, he was elected governor of Connecticut from 1676 until his death in 1683.

Great-great-great-great-great grandson William W. Leete graduated from Amherst and like many of his ancestors, went to Yale where he earned a degree in divinity in 1880. He then continued his studies at Yale’s graduate school. In 1882, he accepted a call to the First Congregational Church in Ridgefield, his first pastorate.

Here he immediately faced a major challenge. The old “meeting house” on the green, built 80 years earlier, was falling apart and the congregation needed a new and larger church. Under his leadership, the congregation came up with a plan to build a new edifice west of the existing one — near where Jesse Lee Memorial United Methodist Church is today. Neighbors objected, however, and the plan was abandoned. 

Henry King McHarg, a wealthy parishioner and descendant of an early Ridgefield minister of the church, came to the rescue, donating land at Main Street and West Lane for the new building, which was erected in 1888 under Leete’s tenure. But on his second Sunday in the brand new church, Mr. Leete gave his farewell sermon — he had taken a pastorate in Rockford, Ill., (the third Ridgefield minister to go there). 

After a decade of pastoral work and perhaps influenced by his experiences in Ridgefield, he spent 25 years as the New England secretary for the Congregational Church Building Society, and then another 10 years as editorial and field secretary of the Congregational Church Extension Board. In both capacities, he helped local congregations build new churches.

While in Ridgefield, Rev. Leete had a rather unusual interest for a 19th Century clergyman: He played baseball. “He was considered a good baseballist,” The Ridgefield Press reported at the time. And the newspaper should have known — Leete played for the Press’s own team in the 1880s. 

Later in life, he became a champion golfer; for five consecutive years he won the Class A trophy for players 75 or older at the United States Golf Association tournament in Rye, N.Y. The New York Times reported that “he also excelled as a skater.”

During his pastorate here, Leete met and fell in love with Ann Eliza Rockwell — two of whose uncles, George and Phineas Lounsbury, became, like William’s ancestor, Connecticut governors. The marriage explains why, after he died in 1946 at the age of 91, he was buried in the Lounsbury section of the Ridgefield Cemetery. It also explains the name of their son,  the Rev. William Rockwell Leete, born in Ridgefield in 1886, who is buried alongside his parents at the Lounsbury Cemetery.

The younger Leete had a rather exotic career, including two years’ imprisonment. After graduating from Yale in 1908, he earned a degree in divinity from Union Theological Seminary and by 1912, was in China, working as a missionary. He spent much of his life there, including many years as a professor at the Nanking Theological Seminary in Shanghai. He also earned a doctorate in divinity during a sabbatical in the U.S.

In 1941, he was arrested by conquering Japanese soldiers, and held in a Shanghai prison camp until 1943 when his release was finally secured. He immediately headed home, only to learn that, while he had been imprisoned, his son, Lt. Jonathan Leete of the Army Air Force, had gone missing in action in the Middle East. Lt. Leete was never found.

After the war, Dr. Leete returned to teaching in China. He was forced back to the States when the communists began taking over the country. He died in Michigan in 1952.

Being fifth and sixth great-grandchildren of Gov. William Leete put the two ministers in some unusual company. Another fifth great-grandchild was John Brown, the abolitionist whose body lay “moldering in the grave” after being executed for his raid on Harpers Ferry.

Financier J.P. Morgan, one of the richest men in the world in his time, was a sixth great grandson. Even stars of stage and screen have been in the clan. Film actor Humphrey Bogart was a seventh great-grandson. A ninth great-grandson is TV comic/actor Ed Helms from The Daily Show and The Office, who was also the voice for animated films of the Lorax and, err, Captain Underpants (what would the Revs. Leete think of that?).

 

Irad Hawley: 
His Name and Face Live On

A son of a Ridgefield deacon and great grandson of the town’s first minister, Irad Hawley made a fortune in food, coal and railroads, but he left his mark on the world in two rather different ways: The home of one of America’s leading art centers, and the name of a small Pennsylvania town.

And you can see his face, hanging on the wall, whenever you visit the Ridgefield Library — or the Salmagundi Club.

Born in Ridgefield in 1793, Irad Hawley was a great grandson of the Rev. Thomas Hauley, the first minister and the first school teacher in the town. The minister’s home  at the north corner of Main Street and Branchville Road is the oldest house in Ridgefield and is where Irad was born. It remained in the Hawley family for more than two centuries.

His father, Deacon Elisha Hawley,  was a leader in the First Congregational Church. His mother, Charity Hawley was active in the community, so much so that when he was preparing his autobiography, Recollections of A Lifetime, in the 1850s, Samuel G. Goodrich (“Peter Parley”)  interviewed her to refresh his memory about the town during his childhood (and he included a long profile of the Deacon in his book). She died in 1860, five months short of her 100th birthday.

 In 1807 when he was only 14 years old, Irad moved to New York to begin a career in retailing. He took a break to join the New York Militia’s 11th Regiment, serving in the War of 1812 as a private. He remained a reserve member of the militia until his death, by which time he’d reached the rank of major.

After the war he established a grocery firm called Holmes, Hawley & Company, which grew into “a prosperous house in the West India trade for more than 25 years,” said the New York Observer, a 19th Century newspaper. He married his partner’s daughter, Sarah Holmes, in 1819.

But his interests — and income — soon expanded. He helped organize the Pennsylvania Coal Company, and served as its first president. Many of that company’s operations were in Poconos.  There, Irad established the town of Hawley in 1827 at the important junction of a coal-carrying “gravity railroad” and the Delaware & Hudson Canal, which transported the anthracite from there to the Hudson River and on to New York City.

Not surprisingly, Hawley became a director Delaware & Hudson Canal Company.

However, he also invested heavily in the “new technology” of railroads, becoming a director of the Boston & Providence and the Chicago & Rock Island Railroads.

By 1841, he could retire from Holmes & Hawley with what one historian called “an ample fortune.”

The canal, railroads, coal company, and his own business have come and gone, but Hawley’s next big project proved quite lasting, and still stands today.

“In 1852 construction was begun on Hawley's imposing brownstone-fronted house at No. 47 Fifth Avenue between 11th and 12th Streets,” reports Manhattan historian Tom Miller.  “At nearly 40-feet wide, it engulfed two building plots.  Completed the following year, the house was an aristocratic expression of the Italianate style. Inside, the mansion was the epitome of current domestic fashion.  Elegant carved mantels adorned the main rooms, and the dining room was decorated in the Gothic Revival style.”

It is today a New York City Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places.

Hawley became interested in education.  He was a director of the Rutgers Female Institute, the first New York City college for women, and in 1858 headed a group of citizens “in opposition to the expulsion of the Bible from our Public Schools” — not surprising for the son of a deacon and great grandson of a preacher.

By the early 1860s, Hawley was having health problems. In 1862, he sailed to Europe to try to regain his health. (His 1862 passport application, in the days before passports had

pictures, provided an interesting description of the 69-year-old Hawley’s appearance: “Stature, 5 feet 7½ inches; Forehead, high; Eyes, grayish blue; Nose, Roman; Mouth, small; Chin, round; Hair, white; Complexion, florid; Face, oval.”)

 Hawley wound up staying in Italy where, in 1865, he contracted typhoid fever and died in Rome. He left an estate valued at $500,000 — equal to about $8.5 million today — to his wife, Sarah, and five surviving children.

Some of that was real estate in Ridgefield and his sons, detecting the likelihood that the town would become more attractive to city dwellers once the railroad arrived in 1870, invested rather heavily in more village land — eventually owning most of what became the Lounsbury estate and Veterans Park as well as considerable acreage on lower High Ridge.

However, one son — Elisha Judson Hawley — proved a disaster for the family. Judson, as he was called, was caught in 1871, stealing more than $237,000 ($4.8 million) from family investments to cover personal business interests. The result was years of financial stress, battling among family members and even a  lawsuit as the Hawleys struggled to make up for the losses.  The New York Sun reported that the widow Sarah Hawley had “agreed to take a much less income than she was entitled to so as to help make up the deficit.” 

Judson Hawley was never arrested or prosecuted. He died in 1915 in England, leaving an estate valued at only $200,000 in today’s dollars — less than a 20th of what he had stolen years earlier, reports Ridgefield village historian David Daubenspeck.

Irad’s estate wasn’t finally settled until 1919 when the last Ridgefield property — the Hauley Homestead where he was born — was sold.

Sarah remained in the Fifth Avenue mansion with two of her grown sons, Daniel Edwin and Elisha Judson, along with Judson’s wife, Anna. After Sarah died in 1891, the house was sold at auction to a Pittsburgh steel magnate.

That family sold it in 1917 to the Salmagundi Club, which describes itself as “a center for American art since 1871.” Its members have included   William Merritt Chase,  Frederick Stuart Church,   Charles Dana Gibson,   William Hart, Childe Hassam,   Howard Pyle,  Norman Rockwell,  Augustus Saint-Gaudens,  Louis Comfort Tiffany,  J. Alden Weir,   Stanford White,  and N.C. Wyeth.

Today, portraits of both Ira and Mary are displayed in those hallowed Salmagundi chambers the couple once called home. 

Duplicates hang in the Ruggles Fine Arts Reading Room of the Ridgefield Library.

Jonathan Ingersoll: 

Overcoming A Handicap 

200 Centuries Ago

Attaining success while dealing with a handicap has never been easy. Jonathan Ingersoll faced his very visible problem  two centuries ago and gained considerable success.

Many people with a casual interest in the history of Ridgefield — or Connecticut —   have heard the name of Ingersoll. Best known among this clan locally was the Rev. Jonathan Ingersoll, second minister of the First Congregational Church, who served from 1739 until his death in 1778. (Rev. Ingersoll’s profile has already been published here on Old Ridgefield.)

Less known in town but once a prominent person in the state was his namesake son, Jonathan Ingersoll, who was not only a political leader but the head of family whose members were remarkably accomplished. At the same time he was a man who overcame an unusual handicap, one especially difficult for a lawyer to deal with.

Born in Ridgefield in 1747, young Jonathan grew up here and went off to Yale, where he graduated in 1766. He settled in New Haven, practiced law, and married Grace Isaacs. 

Active in the civic side of the colony, Ingersoll was elected a congressman in 1793 but wound up declining the post before the 3rd Congress convened, and was never sworn in to office. He served as a Superior Court judge from 1798 to 1801 and from 1811 to 1816. He left that job to become lieutenant governor of Connecticut, the ninth person to hold that position. He remained in office until his death in 1823 at the age of 75.

In his autobiographical “Recollections of A Lifetime,” published in 1856, Samuel G. Goodrich (“Peter Parley”) discussed Jonathan, whom he had known when he was a boy and described as physically “erect” and “slender.” Ingersoll suffered from a problem that is probably what physicians today call blepharospasm. 

“He was marked by a nervous twitch of the face, which usually signalized itself when he began to address the jury,” Goodrich said. “On these occasions his eyes opened and shut spasmodically; at the same time he drew the corners of his mouth up and down, the whole seeming as if it was his object to set the court in a roar. Sometimes he succeeded, in spite of all his efforts to the contrary. Indeed, it was impossible for a person on seeing this for the first time, to avoid a smile — perhaps a broad one. 

“It might seem that such a frailty would have been a stumbling-block in his profession; yet it was not so,” Goodrich continued. “I suspect, indeed, that his practice as a lawyer was benefited by it — for the world likes an easy handle to a great name, and this is readily supplied by a personal peculiarity. 

“At all events, such was the dignity of his character, the grace of his language, and the perfection of his logic, his law, and his learning, that he stood among the foremost of his profession. He became lieutenant-governor of the State, a judge of the Supreme Court, and held various other responsible offices.”

Ingersoll must also have been an influential parent: His children and grandchildren became leaders in Connecticut and the nation:

His son, Ralph Isaacs Ingersoll (1789-1872), a lawyer, became a United States congressman from Connecticut from 1825 to 1833. He served three years as U.S. minister to Russia in the 1840s and was elected mayor of New Haven in 1851. (His house at 143 Elm Street is now a building at Yale, from which he graduated in 1808.)

Another son, Charles Anthony Ingersoll (1798-1860), also a lawyer, served as a U.S. District judge for Connecticut from 1853 until his death in 1860.

His daughter, Grace Ingersoll (1786-1816) married a highly placed Frenchman named Pierre Grellet. She moved to France where, according to Goodrich,  she  became a celebrity at the Court of Napoleon “and always maintained a pre-eminence, alike for beauty of person, grace of manners, and delicacy and dignity of character.” Unfortunately, in 1816, she developed a “pulmonary complaint” and, as Goodrich rather darkly phrased it, “descended into the tomb” at the age of 29, leaving behind two young daughters. 

Grandson Colin Macrae Ingersoll (1819-1903)  of New Haven, a lawyer, was a U.S. congressman from Connecticut from 1851 to 1855.

Grandson Charles Roberts Ingersoll (1821-1903) of New Haven,  another lawyer, was governor of Connecticut from 1873 to 1877. 

Finally, a great-grandson was George Pratt Ingersoll (1861-1927), who was born in New Haven but later lived many years in Ridgefield. Yet another lawyer, he was U.S. minister to Siam from 1917 to 1918 and ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1910. His significance to Ridgefield is probably chiefly his house, which became an inn in the 1930s and is now Bernard’s restaurant — right across West Lane from the church whose congregation his great-great grandfather led more than two centuries ago.

Linda Davies: 

A Long Career and Memory

Linda Davies was one of the last of a long line of educators who were born in Ridgefield, grew up in the town,  and spent their lives teaching here. In her case, that career lasted nearly a half century.

 As a 20-year-old in 1930,  Davies began instructing first through fourth graders at the two-room Branchville Schoolhouse, which still stands along Old Branchville Road. She went on to teach for 42 years. “Even after her retirement, she came back and served as a substitute for a number of years,” said former schools personnel director Paul Hazel. “What a delightful thing that is.”

Margaret Linda Davies was born here the day before Christmas in 1909, a daughter of William and Jenny Tait Davies. Her father, an immigrant from England who was an estate gardener, and her mother, who was born in Northern Ireland, had each left school after the fourth grade.

She attended Ridgefield schools and graduated from Ridgefield High School in 1928. She then studied in the teaching program at Danbury Normal School, now Western Connecticut State University, for two years and began working at Branchville. By the 1950s, she was teaching fifth grade at the new Veterans Park School and when she retired in 1972, was a social studies teacher at East Ridge Junior High School. 

Over the years she had continued her studies, receiving a bachelor's degree from Teachers College at Columbia University in 1939 and a master's degree there two years later. She did advanced graduate studies at New York University, Eastern Connecticut State College, UConn, and Fairfield University. 

She considered teaching a difficult but rewarding experience. "The processes of child development are extremely complex," she told a Press interviewer in 1955. “One of the greatest sources of satisfaction to the teacher is in noting [a child’s] improvement and realizing that she or he, through study and evaluation, has had an opportunity to be of some assistance in helping the child to make these gains, whether they be social, emotional, educational, or other."

Davies was active in many Ridgefield organizations, including the Sunshine Society, the OWLS, the Friends of the Library,  the old Grange chapter, and the Keeler Tavern, where she was a cashier for the gift shop. She lived for many years on  Ramapoo Hill Road

Davies belonged to the First Congregational Church where she was a member of the Women's Fellowship. “She was a very dynamic and practical lady,” said Dotty Hall, a fellow church member. “She had good sense and she always had the right answers.”

Davies had a lifelong interest  in politics. In 1978, she was selected as a senior intern to serve in the U.S Congress in Washington, D.C., from the Fifth Congressional District.

She was also an avid traveler and in her younger years, was an active bowler.

She died in 2000 at a nursing home in Mansfield at the age of 90.

Linda Davies was another oldtimer who was valued for her memory of the past. She could recall many details of what life in the village was like long before Main Street was even paved. She knew the people and places well, and had a collection of early photos of the town. She “maintained a vast knowledge of the history and people of Ridgefield,” a family member said.

For seven years, she aided the Ridgefield Archives Committee — forerunner of the Ridgefield Historical Society — in its efforts to identify thousands of old Joseph Hartmann photographs of the town and its people from early in the century. “She knew everything,” said Kay Ables of the Archives Committee and now town historian. “She knew all the people all the stories. She had all this information in her head.”

Rev. Hugh Shields:

A Two-Church Pastor

For most of his long career in Ridgefield, the Rev. Hugh Shields served two congregations. He also served the needs of both the church and state, and he once served as a star of the Hoosier stage. 

Born in 1890, the Indiana native helped earn his way through drama school at Butler University by giving readings of famous people like James Whitcomb Riley, the Indiana poet. Performing under the name of “The Hoosier Impersonator,” Shields even had a management bureau that booked and promoted his appearances. 

“He will, in the course of an evening, vividly bring scores of ... characters before the audience and in his own masterful way, make the audience feel that these children of the poet’s fancy are actually standing before it,” said the bureau’s promotional brochure for him. The promotion also reprinted many reviews of praise, including one from the head of the Indiana Anti-Saloon League, who called Shields  “a reader of rare ability and any community is fortunate that secures him for a series of readings.”

Despite his training and critical praise, Shields soon felt a calling to the pulpit instead of the stage. He graduated from Yale Divinity School and became minister of the First Congregational Church here in 1919. He remained its minister until 1956 after which he was pastor emeritus until his death in 1971 at the age of 80. 

Among his accomplishments was the acquisition of the old Ridgefield Club building, converted to a church hall (it burned down in 1978 and was replaced by today’s Lund Hall), and the resurrection of the failing Ridgebury Congregational Church, which had been closed for some time. He was its pastor from 1923 until 1962. 

His being pastor of two churches created a busy Sunday schedule. He had hoped that he could do First Congregational services in the morning, and Ridgebury in the afternoon, but since most members of the Ridgebury congregation were farmers, they wanted a morning service.  So on a typical Sunday, Ridgebury service was at 8 a.m., Sunday school at First Congregational at 9:30 and the service at 11. At 4 p.m., there was a junior high fellowship, and at 7, a senior high fellowship meeting. For each event, his wife, Alberta Reed Shields, was at his side. 

Shields was the only Ridgefield minister to represent the town in the Connecticut Legislature, and was elected to two terms starting in 1928. 

He was a popular speaker at community events and organizations, and belonged to Rotary, Lions and the Masons. His son, Reed, was a well-known Ridgefield attorney and probate judge for many years. 

In 1963, when he was named Rotary Citizen of the Year, Shields observed, “I love Ridgefield and its people, and find as each year goes by that I love them more.”

In 1966, The Ridgefield Press received a handwritten note, signed “Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Shields,” asking that their subscription be discontinued. “Neither of us has the eyesight to read very much,” the note said, adding that they had enjoyed the paper for much of their lives. “We have been subscribers for almost fifty years, but there surely is an end to all things.”

Karl S. Nash, Ridgefield native and Press publisher (who was 13 years old when the Rev. Shields came to town), sent a note back to the couple, expressing his thanks for their loyal patronage and offering good wishes for the future, but adding: “We cannot agree, though, that ‘there is surely an end to all things.’”  

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).

Daniel W. Teller: 

The First Historian

“There are those who love Ridgefield,” wrote Daniel Teller. “No other word fully expresses their regard for this old town. Every thing done in it is of consequence. Every thing written about it is on interest.”

A minister, a physician and the first true historian of Ridgefield, Teller offered those words in the introduction to the first book ever written about this town. His “History of Ridgefield” offers 251 pages that describe the community’s past from its purchase from the Indians in 1708 through what were then modern times: the year 1878.

     But probably most interesting about Teller’s history are its 18 illustrations of buildings and places nearly a century and a half ago — the earliest collection of what the town looked like. All are line engravings, created from photographs, and include buildings that no longer exist as well as many that are still standing and well-known.

     It is said that Teller was inspired to write his history by his love for the town and as an escape from sadness over the death of his wife, Emily, in 1876.  In an excuse for the book’s brevity, he says that “my personal friends will … consider that I have written in the immediate shadow of a great sorrow. In the quiet shade of our cemetery is a grave whose making has left my house unto me desolate.”

     Unlike the authors of the other two histories of Ridgefield — George L. Rockwell and Silvio Bedini — Daniel Teller was not a native. He was, in fact, rather a newcomer, having spent only six years in town when the book was published.

Daniel Webster Teller was born in 1838 in nearby Yorktown, N.Y. In 1865, he graduated from New York University School of Medicine with a medical degree and for a while practiced as a physician in Brooklyn, N.Y. However, according to The Press in 1894, “he felt impressed with a sense of duty to preach the gospel and, after deliberate consideration, determined to give up medicine, which he did, pursuing a theological course.”

He studied at the Theological Institute of Connecticut, now the Hartford Seminary, and in 1870 was ordained a pastor at Hadlyme on the Connecticut River. However, he was soon called to serve the 198 members of the First Congregational Church in Ridgefield. He settled here in 1872 and eventually had a house on Prospect Street.

According to the Rev. Charles Hambrick-Stowe in his 2011 church history, “We Gather

Together,” Teller arrived at a time when “the church languished in a number of ways.” But under Teller, “the church’s condition recovered markedly.”

 Muriel R. Hanson in a 1962 history of the First Congregational Church said that Teller “became one of the most beloved pastors in the church’s history.” 

His obituary in The Press said that “for nearly a decade, he ministered to the spiritual welfare of this denomination, winning for himself many friends and admirers for his scholarly pulpit utterances and his genial, generous personality.”

During his tenure here, the Ladies Foreign Missionary Auxiliary was established at the church to raise money for overseas missions. The auxiliary sponsored many speakers who described the work of missions in far corners of the world. For a small town like Ridgefield in the days before radio and television, such speakers were major sources of education, entertainment and world news.

 Also during his tenure a battle flared over which area society the Ridgefield congregation should align itself with. Rather than take sides in a hotly debated issue (that would not be resolved for

a quarter century), Teller avoided the conflict by maintaining a status of “acting pastor” throughout his years here.

In 1880 Teller accepted a call to the Howard Avenue Church in New Haven. Although it was a larger congregation, he may have been more interested in change than in greater responsibility. At age 42, he had entered a new chapter in his life by marrying 21-year-old Leonora Gyles, who was the niece of several Ridgefielders.

But his love of the town remained. He continued to own land on Prospect Street until 1887. He visited Ridgefield periodically during his tenures in New Haven, Sherburne, N.Y., and Oswego, N.Y. After he died on March 23, 1894, in Fredonia, N.Y., his body was shipped to Ridgefield and his remains placed next to his first wife’s grave in Titicus Cemetery. (Leonora, who died in 1948, is also buried there.)

While a Ridgefielder, Teller “became thoroughly imbued with the local historical and picturesque features of the town, and wrote a concise, terse history of Ridgefield which has since been a valuable book of reference,” he obituary said.

Few towns the size of Ridgefield had a local history written that early; it wasn’t until the 1890s through the 1920s that most small towns got their first official histories. The book comments little on the events that it records and instead, as the author puts it, “deals largely with the simple statement of fact, the ‘unvarnished truth.’ ”  Aside from the engravings and Teller’s restrained but pleasantly old-fashioned writing style,  the book is noteworthy because it contains some information gathered from first-hand sources not available to subsequent historians. 

Ridgefield history was not ignored by earlier writers — there were two men, a father and son, also connected with the First Congregational Church, who compiled historical accounts of the town and who Teller used as sources. The Rev. Samuel G. Goodrich, third past of the church, wrote an 1800 sketch of Ridgefield, containing some history and contemporary information valuable to

historians today; it was an assignment given to many Congregational ministers in the state to mark 1800, the first year of the new century.

Goodrich’s son, Samuel, went on to become a famous 19th Century writer of history, geography and other books under the name of Peter Parley. To Ridgefielders, however, his most important work was his autobiographical “Recollections of A Lifetime,” published in 1857. In it he spends more than 200 of its 1,100 pages describing his childhood in Ridgefield in the early 1800s. He recalls many of the people and places well known to him and to townspeople then.

 It is not known how many copies of Teller’s history were printed by T. Donovan in Danbury, but the number was probably not more than a few hundred. Both leather and cloth-bound versions were published.  Today, perhaps no more than a few dozen original copies  exist in town, many of them owned by the Ridgefield Library or the the Historical Society. However, thanks to the marvels of modern technology, several “print on demand” companies offer new paperback and hardcover editions for as low as $16; a “super deluxe” version bound in antique-looking leather can be ordered for $75 (an original Teller clothbound edition runs from $125 to $200 and rare leather versions have been offered for $400).

Teller, of course, was not interested in whether his book would be collectible. He wanted to record the story of a town so that the people then and later would know and could appreciate Ridgefield’s history.  And he wanted to write that record before it was too late.

“The necessity for collecting as speedily as possible all items of history must be apparent to everyone who for a moment considers the rapidity with which the opportunities for information are diminished,” he wrote. “Records grow old and fade out. Men grow old and die. Every year reduces the ranks of those who have received directly from their parents and grandparents the recollections and traditions which help so much to explain incidents of history.”

Henry K. McHarg: 

A ‘Santa’ to Many

Ridgefield has been the home of many generous people, but often they were little known for their munificence, preferring not to publicize their generosity. One of them was Henry McHarg, a railroad tycoon who, it it said, over his lifetime quietly gave away some $2 million — equivalent today to more than $50 million.

While most of his gifts were behind the scenes,  one couldn’t avoid being showy.

In 1906, McHarg sold one of his railroads (Virginia & Southwestern) for $6-million ($162-million in today’s dollars). To show his appreciation for the Virginia & Southwestern employees,  he arranged just before Christmas for a special “Santa Claus” train on which a conductor, dressed as St. Nick, traveled the length of the railroad with presents from McHarg to all his former employees. The gifts included full years’ salaries to the higher officials, month’s salaries to all others who had been employed by the railroad for at least a year and various other gifts for the remaining staff. 

 In July 1910, after the sale of the Texas Central Railroad, he did the same thing.

How many corporate leaders of today would do that?

Henry King McHarg was born in Albany, N.Y., in 1851. His great grandfather was Lt. Joshua King, the Revolutionary War “celebrity” and prominent Ridgefield businessman, and his great great grandfather was the Rev. Jonathan Ingersoll, the second minister of the First Congregational Church (both King and Ingersoll are profiled in Who Was Who).

McHarg attended a private school in Geneva, N.Y. At the age of 15, he joined the investment offices of LeGrand Lockwood, a Wall Street stockbroker. Lockwood’s interests included railroads, among them the Danbury and Norwalk Railroad, of which he was a major stockholder and eventually president. Lockwood’s interest in railroads may have inspired McHarg, who also became fascinated with that rapidly growing industry and wound up owning a at least four railroads around the country. (Lockwood, a Norwalk native who died in 1872, built and lived in what is now the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion, a historical museum in Norwalk.) 

When Lockwood ran into some financial troubles in 1869 and had to downsize his office, McHarg joined the Third National Bank and worked his way up in the world of finance so that on the day after his 21st birthday, he became a member of the New York Stock Exchange (when he retired from the exchange in 1926, he was its oldest member). In 1873, he went into the bond and investment business in partnership with William Adams, under the name of Adams & McHarg. After 12 years, the two split and McHarg continued the business alone.

According to The Encyclopedia of Connecticut biography, published in 1917, “The railroad

interests of Mr. McHarg have for a long period been numerous and important.” His specialty was taking over failing railroads and turning them into successful, profitable operations. Among them were the Texas Central (of which he was president for about 20 years),  the Atlanta, Knoxville & Northern, the Virginia & Southwestern, and Detroit & Mackinac. He was president of all those railroads but also served as a director of many others, including the Danbury and Norwalk Railroad, and the New York, New Haven, and Hartford (later the New Haven railroad), which took over the Danbury and Norwalk line.

“Mr. McHarg’s railroad work has invariably been constructive,” the encyclopedia said. “While the element of speculation, which is never wholly absent from any business undertaking, had its part in his ventures, more especially as they were all the rehabilitation of unsuccessful enterprises, he has contributed substantially to the advancement of the railroad interests of the last third of a century, having imparted to everything he undertook some portion of his vitalizing energy.”

It was through his railroading ventures that McHarg wound up naming a town. For many years he had a home in Stamford. According to Texas historian Tammy Hill Harvey, in April of 1891, a group of Texas Central Railroad bondholders that included Henry McHarg bought the railroad, which was in foreclosure.  McHarg made many trips to Texas to reorganize the Texas Central and in 1899, after a meeting with two men named Swenson who owned a large tract of land for a new town, he struck a deal in which the Swensons gave half their land to the Texas Central in exchange for making the town the new end of the line. A 40-mile track was laid from Albany, Texas, to the new town site, which McHarg named “Stamford” in honor of his own home town. On Jan. 8, 1900, Stamford, Texas was officially incorporated.” (Today, the city of some 3,100 people is best know as the home of the annual “Texas Cowboy Reunion.”)

McHarg was an avid yachtsman and in the 1890s owned the 65-foot cruising schooner, Neaera. He was a founder in 1895 of the Stamford Yacht Club (the club proudly points out that Commodore McHarg was responsible for naming Stamford, Texas, and that McHarg’s vice-commodore at the club was Schuyler Merritt, the Connecticut congressman for whom the Merritt Parkway was named).

Around 1925, after his wife Fredericka had died, McHarg decided to move to the town of his family’s roots, buying a house on Nod Road a little south of Whipstick Road. Two years later he married Elizabeth Clark Pierce; she was 36 and he, 76. The Nod Road home remained his main residence for the rest of his life. 

McHarg was a philanthropist who usually went out of his way to keep his donations anonymous. “It is reported that they totaled $2 million, but rarely was public mention made of them,” The Times said in his obituary. But the newspaper did point out that one of his many New York City contributions was $5,000 ($70,000 today) to the “Home for Old Men and Aged Couples,” operated by the Episcopal church.

He showed considerable generosity in Stamford, where he had lived for more than 35, giving large amounts of money to organizations like Stamford Hospital, the YMCA,  and the
Ferguson Library.

His contributions in Ridgefield were kept quiet — except for one he made 37 years before he moved to town. McHarg donated to the First Congregational Church the land on which its landmark stone church was built in 1888.

Henry McHarg died in 1941 of a heart attack while wintering in Florida. His wife, Elizabeth, continued to live in Ridgefield until 1966 when she moved to Apache Junction, Ariz. She helped pioneer the organic gardening movement in the Ridgefield area in the 1930s, was active in the Red Cross during World War II, and after the war revitalized the Ridgefield chapter of Children’s Services of Connecticut (now Family and Children’s Aid). She died in 1976 at the age of 85. 

What must have been one of the most trying periods for the McHarg family occurred in the 1930s when the aging Henry Sr., then 82, was sued by his son, Henry Jr., then 53, for failing to give him control of the Detroit & Mackinac Railroad as Senior had apparently promised. Junior had

worked for years as the railroad’s vice president and general manager at a small salary that he accepted with the understanding the railroad would someday be his.

But after his mother died and his father remarried, dad decided he wanted to sell the railroad so he could give most of the proceeds to charity. The son would get $300,000 after dad died.

Henry Jr. did not like that, and sued his father for $1 million. The two became “enemies” for several years.

When the suit was finally settled, the story in The New York Times brought tears to the eyes of many readers.

New York State Supreme Court Justice Aaron J. Levy presided over the case in October of 1934. After several conferences, a settlement was reached in which Senior would make a new will, leaving a third of his estate — nearly $1 million — to Junior and Junior’s three children. 

The lawyer for Junior tried to get the son to shake hands with his father and become friends again. Junior refused. The judge then told the younger McHarg: “Don’t you know this defendant is your father, whether he is right or wrong?”

“You don’t know the bitterness I have suffered over these years,” replied the son.

“I don’t want to hear about that,” said Justice Levy. “My suggestion in the light of this settlement, and even apart from it, is that you go and tender your hand to your father and ask him to forgive you.”

“The son then asked for time to consider the proposal,” the Times said, “but Judge Levy asked him to act at once. The younger McHarg then agreed, and walked up to his father at the counsel table, extending his hand. The father looked up, blinked in surprise and then took his son’s hand and embraced him. Both wept for some moments. 

“After they sat together for a time, the son told the court, ‘I am glad Your Honor brought me to think of it. Now we will both be very happy and I know my children will be also.’

“‘I would give this boy my soul,’ said the father.”

The two left the court, arm in arm.

Junior died in 1943, only two years after his father.

Rev. Jonathan Ingersoll: 

A Historic Minister 

Ridgefield’s earliest Congregational preachers must have found something to their liking in Ridgefield. Between 1715 and 1811, nearly a century, there were only three settled ministers. But while each served many years here, the one in the middle — the Rev. Jonathan Ingersoll — lasted longer than any minister in the First Congregational Church’s more than three centuries. He spent 39 years as the congregation’s leader, and would no doubt have continued to serve longer had he not died of  “an apoplectic fit” at the age of 64. He left behind a family that became part of the town until the 1960s.

Ingersoll’s predecessor — the town’s first minister, Thomas Hauley — was only 49 when he died after preaching 25 years here, and his successor — the Rev. S. G. Goodrich — also spent 25 years here before moving to upstate congregation.

Jonathan Ingersoll was born in 1713 in Derby (then part of Milford), a son of Jonathan and Sarah Ingersoll whose ancestors were among the early settlers of Hartford and the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts. Like so many ministers who came to Ridgefield, Ingersoll graduated from Yale, in 1736. His first preaching post was at a Presbyterian church in New Jersey (Congregationalists and Presbyterians were closely allied in the 18th Century) and in 1739, he was called to replace Mr. Hauley in Ridgefield. A year later he married Dorcas Moss, a minister’s daughter from Derby.

From all accounts he was well-respected in Ridgefield. “He is described as a man of brilliant intellect, of great strength and force of character,” said George L. Rockwell in his “History of Ridgefield” (1927).

Unlike most clergymen in Ridgefield’s long history, Ingersoll took a break from his local duties to serve in the military. He was chaplain for the town’s militia and, during the French and Indian War, he volunteered as a chaplain with Connecticut troops — including 22 Ridgefield men — serving around Lake George and Fort Ticonderoga (then called Carillon).  

According to Tim Abbott, a sixth great grandson of Ingersoll, “In 1758 he was chaplain for Colonel David Wooster’s 4th Regiment in Abercromby’s ill-fated expedition against the French at Carillon.  Wooster’s men were caught up in the attack, and Chaplain Ingersoll wrote to a fellow church colleague that God showed ‘distinguishing mercy to the Connecticut Troops’ who suffered few deaths in that dreadful slaughter.”

During Lord Amherst’s campaign the following year he was chaplain of the 3rd Regiment, again under Colonel Wooster, traveling from captured Fort Carillon to Oswego and then down the St. Lawrence.

His intellect, and perhaps also his notable family and his service with Wooster, gave Ingersoll a wide reputation and in 1761, he was invited to preach before the General Assembly on Election Day. He offered the colonial politicians a word of gentle warning: “You are the fathers of the common-wealth, and all our eyes are upon you,” he said. “See to it that your powers of mind are sanctified by grace, and always remember that you judge for the Lord. Let the interest of religion, and the welfare of the community (which indeed are necessarily connected), let these lye near your hearts.”

When it came to the Revolution, Ingersoll probably tended to be on the conservative side of the issues. When George III became king in 1760, Ingersoll had praised him as “richly endowed with all royal gifts and graces,” adding that through his influence, “we hope for the enjoyment of the best of liberties and privileges for for a great while to come.”

In “We Gather Together,” a 2011 history of the First Congregational Church, author Charles Hambrick-Stowe says, “Circumstances soon forced the church to decide how to pray for civil authorities, whether to continue to support George III and the Empire or the movement for independence. Jonathan Ingersoll probably shared  the views of his brother Jared, a political leader in the colony who hoped that compromise and moderation would resolve the Stamp Act crisis of 1765. Jared Ingersoll worked to reduce the rate of the tax and accepted the position of stamp distributor for Connecticut in order to soften its impact. His efforts were rewarded with accusations of treason that destroyed his political career.”

Ridgefield in the mid-1770s leaned to the Tory side. “Jonathan Ingersoll’s leadership is often cited as influencing a town vote opposing the Continental Congress in January 1775,” the Rev. Hambrick-Stowe writes. However, “the beginning of armed conflict at Lexington and Concord in April and the subsequent siege of Boston swayed many in town to the Patriot side.” It is unknown whether Ingersoll was among those so swayed, but many in his congregation were leading supporters of the revolutionary cause. So were three of his sons in law.

Capt. David Olmsted, who was married to Abigail Ingersoll, fought at the Battle of Ridgefield. He became a leading town and state official after the war.

Another of Ingersoll’s daughters, Anne, married Lt. Joshua King, a Revolutionary officer who was in charge of the imprisoned British spy, Major John Andre, before his execution. Because of Anne, King settled in Ridgefield, established the King and Dole store (which grew into Bedient’s Hardware), and became a major landowner. But, in the church’s eyes, what is perhaps more remarkable about this union is that it led to Henry King McHarg (1851-1941),  great great grandson of the Rev. Jonathan Ingersoll. McHarg,  a wealthy banker and railroad president, donated to First Congregational the land on which its current landmark stone church was built in 1888. (McHarg lived on Nod Road until his death in 1941 but his much younger wife, Elizabeth, remained in town until the 1960s, dying in 1976 at the age of 84.)

Another of Ingersoll’s sons-in-law, a lieutenant in the Revolution, did not fare so well afterwards. Ebenezer Olmsted, husband of Esther Ingersoll, got caught pocketing state tax money he had taken in as a Ridgefield tax collector and wound up having all his property confiscated by the town. Perhaps fortunately for Ingersoll, he had died before Olmsted’s malfeasance took place and threw the town nearly into financial ruin (see separate “Who Was Who” profile).

Ingersoll’s son, Jonathan (1747-1823), became a respected post-war political leader. The Ridgefield native, another Yale graduate, served as lieutenant governor of Connecticut and as a Superior Court judge. He was also elected a congressman from Connecticut, but declined the job before being sworn in.

Finally, his brother’s son, Jared Ingersoll, not only supported the Revolution, but also helped write the U.S. Constitution and was a signer of the document.

Although most people would not think of Ridgefield as being a place where people were enslaved, slaves were found in most Connecticut communities in 18th Century — and in the Ingersoll household. In 1730, Connecticut’s 38,000 residents included about 700 slaves. By 1770, it had more than 6,400 slaves, the largest population of any New England colony. Half of all the ministers, lawyers, and public officials owned slaves, and a third of all the doctors, reports Connecticut historian Jackson Turner Main.

Jonathan Ingersoll was among Ridgefield’s slave owners. However, in 1777, shortly before his death, Ingersoll asked the Board of Selectmen to approve making his slave, Cyphax, a free man. Under colony law, the selectmen had to make sure the freed person wouldn’t be a burden on the town. The selectmen approved of Cyphax, who was 20 years old, and he was freed. 

By 1790,  five slaves were still left in Ridgefield. 

Hildegarde Oskison: 

Writing Was in Her Blood

In 1950, when Hildegarde Oskison had turned 79 years old and had written nearly two dozen books, she announced that she would retire from writing and commence to enjoy what others   had written. She did not, however, retire from community involvement and continued to attend Ridgefield Town Meetings and First Congregational Church activities and could be seen each day walking to the post office from her home on East Ridge and later, The Elms Inn. 

During her long career, Oskison had probably out-produced her more illustrious grandfather, publishing 23 books and many newspaper and magazine pieces, usually under her maiden name, Hildegarde Hawthorne.

One of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s seven grandchildren, Hildegarde Hawthorne was born in New York City in 1871 but spent much of her youth growing up in England, Germany, Jamaica, and Long Island — her father, Julian Hawthorne, was a journalist, novelist and poet who moved around a lot. 

She had little formal education, outside of tutors and her parents, but clearly had inherited her family’s love of writing. When she was only 16, her first short story was published in St. Nicholas, a magazine for children, and she continued to write for young people throughout her life.

When she was 20, Harper’s published the first of her articles aimed at adults and she went on to produce hundreds of pieces on travel, gardening, and other subjects, as well as to write many ghost stories. Among her 23 books were half dozen biographies, including one on her grandfather, called

“The Romantic Rebel,”  and others on  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. She also wrote six Westerns aimed at young readers, several histories, a book on gardening, and many travelogues.

“The travelogues, such as Corsica (1926), are highly descriptive, personal accounts,” said biographer Jane Stanbrough. “Of her histories, ‘California’s Missions’ (1942) is a very interesting and directly related account of those missions and the men who founded them. It is a well-written work that still deserves to be read.”

As for those Westerns, Stanbrough characterized them as “superficial and hackneyed.”

In 1920, she married John Milton Oskison (1874–1947), a writer and journalist who was the first person of American Indian descent to graduate from Stanford University.  They lived for many years in California where Hildegarde became a frequent hiker and camper, and often established friendships with both backwoodsmen and American Indians. She produced three books on California and used her wilderness experiences in writing her Westerns.

During World War I, Oskison assisted the soldiers by serving with the YWCA troop support services in France and with the Red Cross. At the same time, she provided dispatches to The New York Times and The New York Herald about aspects of the war she was witnessing. In the 1920s she also wrote many book reviews for both papers.

In the early 20th Century, Oskison was active in the woman’s suffrage movement and took

part in many rallies.

She came to Ridgefield around 1940, living on East Ridge; by then, she had been separated from her husband. By the late 1940s, she had moved to The Elms Inn on Main Street. She died in 1952 at the age of 81.

Her last article, written for Reader’s Digest when she was nearly 80 years old, described her aunt, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, a writer who after a troublesome marriage to an alcoholic who died of cirrhosis,  became a Catholic nun. In 1901, as Mother Mary Alphonsa, O.P., Rose Hawthorne established  the Rosary Hill Home for terminally cancer patients, which still operated today in Hawthorne, N.Y., by an order of nuns that she founded.

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.