George Washington Gilbert: 

The Hermit of Ridgefield

Some say George Washington Gilbert’s mind snapped when his sweetheart deserted him. Others say he was just odd from the beginning. But for years he lived, usually barefoot, in his pre-Revolutionary family homestead as it fell down around him, a situation captured in many photographs and even on postcards.

Born in 1847 in that homestead, he was educated at a private boys school in the village. Little is known of how he spent his early adulthood, but for his last 40 years, he lived alone on Florida Hill Road. 

“By his own account, he became a hermit following the death of the girl he planned to marry,” said Silvio A. Bedini in “Ridgefield in Review.

He lived by himself and rarely visited the village, existing on a budget of about 30 cents a week. However, Gilbert was not without visitors. Hundreds of people, young and old, would call on him each year and “he related many strange tales and yarns which gained in detail and wonder with each narration,” wrote George L. Rockwell in  “History of Ridgefield.”

He enjoyed posing tricky mathematical questions, such as “What is a third and a half of a third of 10?” and showing people the sword that his grandfather had supposedly captured from a Hessian soldier at the Battle of Monmouth during the Revolution. 

He would also take visitors to his cellar where there was a stone in the chimney basement that reportedly bore a striking resemblance to the profile of Queen Victoria.

Gilbert invariably dressed in a cotton shirt, overalls hung by suspenders, and an old straw hat.

And he wore no shoes for much of the year. In fact, The Ridgefield Press would sometimes announce the seasonal comings and goings of his shoes. For instance, the May 7, 1886 issue noted: “George Washington Gilbert has dispensed with his shoes,” a sure sign of the “approach of summer.” And on Dec. 23, 1887, “It has been demonstrated beyond question that winter is here. George Washington Gilbert has donned his boots.”

Gilbert’s home literally fell apart around him and for a while, he had to move his bed onto the hearth of the old fireplace, the chimney stack being the only shelter left. 

Finally, Col. Edward M. Knox, whose huge Downesbury Manor estate was down Florida Hill Road a bit, took pity on him. Knox had a cottage built for the hermit, where he spent his last years.

On Jan. 6, 1924, during a bitterly cold spell, a neighbor looked in on Mr. Gilbert and found him frozen to death in his cottage.  

George Washington Gilbert is buried at the New Florida Cemetery at Route 7 and Simpaug Turnpike under a stone that reads: “The Hermit of Ridgefield.” His father, Jeremiah (d. 1860), and mother, Eliza (d. 1884), lie next to him.  

Charles E. Jennings: 
A Boy of War

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charles Bluhdorn: 

The 'Mad Austrian'

His death seemed like his life: face-paced and high-powered. Charles G. Bluhdorn, who began his career as a $15-a-week worker and became one of the world’s richest and most powerful men, died of a heart attack on a corporate jet in February 1983, returning from a Caribbean resort he created. 

Born in Vienna in 1926, Bluhdorn as a boy was considered such a “hellion” that his father sent the 11-year-old to an English boarding school for disciplining. 

At 16, he came to New York, studying at City College and Columbia and served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. In 1946, he went to work at the Cotton Exchange, earning $15 a week. Three years later, he formed a company that would make him a millionaire at 30. 

In 1956, he acquired Michigan Bumper, a small auto parts company that eventually grew into Gulf and Western, a conglomerate that ranked 61st in the Fortune 500 by 1981 and owned  Paramount Pictures, Madison Square Garden, and Simon & Schuster publishing as well as the Bohack supermarket chain, companies that made guitars and survival equipment for astronauts, and jet engine parts. He was CEO and chairman of the board.

In 1965 he was on the cover of Time magazine as one of a handful of millionaires under 40; he was said to be worth $15 million ($114 million in today’s dollars).

Once called “Wall Street’s Mad Austrian,” he was a classic workaholic. “My wife thinks I’m nuts,” he told an interviewer. “But when you’re building something, you’re spinning a web and tend to become a prisoner in the web.” 

While Bluhdorn was a high-powered, hard-driving executive, he was surprisingly informal. “Charlie makes a great impression at first,” an associate once said. “He dazzles you until you suddenly draw back. You wonder: Why is he acting this way? What is his game? Later you realize how natural and straightforward he really is. It can be a little scary. I mean you would expect the head of a huge corporation like Gulf and Western to be a little more, well, formal.”

A Life magazine profile by Chris Welles in 1967 offered this description of his work “style”: “Formality is the last thing anyone would accuse Charlie Bluhdorn of. His impatience throws his whole behavior out of whack. He never walks but runs, flat-footed, slightly off-balance, as if he were racing down a railroad track on snowshoes, jotting down thoughts on scraps of paper as he goes. The last time he was talked into a golf game, he smashed his golf cart into a cement wall. He distrusts anything mechanical. Often in his oflice, surrounded by telephones, he becomes Hercules battling the Hydra, cursing wrong numbers, crossed lines, small delays, hopelessly entangled in wires. stabbing wildly at the buttons on the receivers. ‘Bluhdorn is like a race horse,’ says an associate. ‘Put him on the track and he runs a great race. But somebody has to lead him back to the stable, cover him with a blanket and give him some food.”

When he died, Bluhdorn’s corporate jet was flying from the Dominican Republic to New York. He had a special fondness for the Dominican Republic, and spent millions on the economic and social

development of the island nation. Some called him the father of the Dominican tourism industry after he developed what became the world-famous Casa de Campo resort, which includes three internationally renowned golf courses designed by Pete Dye. Oscar de la Renta, a Dominican and a friend of Bluhdorn, designed the interior of Casa De Campo

Gulf and Western had some 300,000 acres of sugar plantation there, with a workforce of 19,000 people — it was the nation’s largest private employer, biggest landowner, and top taxpayer.  

After he bought Paramount in 1966, Bluhdorn planned to develop moviemaking center on the island. Scenes from such films as Godfather Part II (1974), Sorcerer (1977) and Apocalypse Now (1979) were shot there.

In 1963, Bluhdorn and his wife, Yvette, bought a 28-acre estate on lower Florida Hill Road. Over his years here, he quietly contributed to the community; for instance, he bought the Ridgefield Police a boat and trailer for its scuba team. He was also a trustee of Texas Wesleyan College and the Trinity Episcopal Schools Corporation in New York,  and bought a 12-story building at 2 Columbus Circle in order to donate it to the city in 1980 as a cultural center.

Bluhdorn was also modest in his tastes for a home. While his estate on Florida Hill Road had a pool, tennis court, greenhouse, and other amenities, his house had only eight rooms. When designer Alexander Julian bought the spread in 1988, he and his wife built and lived in a new 6,000-square-foot house on the property.

Bluhdorn was only 56 when he died. Among those who attended the private funeral services at St. Mary’s Church was former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.