George Lounsbury:

The Plain and Simple

One doesn’t usually find a finely dressed gentleman — much less a state governor — leading a team of field oxen. The man photographed with a whip and a yoke is George E. Lounsbury, 58th governor of Connecticut (1899-1901), and the scene is his farm, The Hickories, in Farmingville, about 1900. 

Governor Lounsbury had lived on the Lounsbury Road farm since he was two years old and, though a Yale graduate and prominent businessman, retained it as his lifelong home. When he died in 1904, The Ridgefield Press observed, “Wealth and public position, when attained, often cause men to ignore those who have contributed to their success. Not so with him. He was fond of the plain, simple, unconventional customs of rural life and always kept himself in close touch with the rural people of the town.” 

In 1964, after the picture had appeared in The Press for a history feature, Katharine Bell Russell of Columbus, Ohio, formerly of Pin Pack Road, wrote the editors: “I was five years old and remember well when that picture was taken, as I was there. My grandmother was the widow of the Rev. John Swinburne Whedon, who died while he was minister of the Methodist Church in Ridgefield, and a year later she married Governor Lounsbury. That was in 1894. We spent all our summers at The Hickories from 1896 to 1915. The oxen were Bill and Star, and the white collie was Snowland.”

Today, The Hickories, owned by the Brewster family, is Ridgefield’s only working farm. In 1996, the town bought the development rights to 101 acres of its farmland.

George Edward Lounsbury was one of the town’s most influential citizens. In fact,  his Press obituary reported, “he wielded a greater influence over his fellow townsmen than any other single person.”  

He was born in Pound Ridge, N.Y., in 1838, but his parents moved to Farmingville two years 

later, and it was at the Farmingville Schoolhouse that he received his early education (around 1899, he donated a brand, new schoolhouse to the district; after it closed in 1940, it wassold and moved to North Salem, N.Y., where it served many years as an artist’s studio).

He graduated from Yale  in 1863 and from Berkeley Divinity School three years later. He began his career as an Episcopal priest, serving in a couple of Connecticut congregations, but because of throat problems, left the ministry and entered the family business,  operating shoe factories in Norwalk for the rest of his life. 

An active Republican, he was elected a state senator in 1895 and 1897, and governor from 1899 to 1901. (His brother, Phineas, had been governor 12 years earlier.)  He was a popular candidate; according to an 1899 history, the Republicans swept the state “with a majority which has been exceeded only twice in the history of that party.” 

He had a quiet two years in office. The Hartford Courant put it this way: “In looks, manner and oratory, there was a decided suggestion of the South in George E. Lounsbury...At the state house, he was a useful and ornamental senator, and if no hard problems came his way as governor, he at least performed the routine and ceremonial duties of the office with ease and a becoming dignity.”

After his retirement, he became president of the First National Bank here (an ancestor of the Wells Fargo branch on Main Street). 

“Although he was more than ordinarily successful and acquired wealth, position and prominence, he always retained an interest in the common people, with whom he mingled freely and in whose welfare he was deeply interested, as he often showed in many practical ways, unknown to the general public,” his obituary said. 

Samuel Keeler: 

The Stern and Staunch Commuter

When he was 86 years old, Samuel Keeler was still commuting to his law office in New York City and was reputedly the oldest commuter on the New Haven line — both in age and length of endurance. He was still making the trip until a month before he died in 1932; he had started this daily journey back around 1870 and may have been among the first passengers on the Ridgefield to Branchville railroad spur that opened that year.

That’s more than 60 years of riding the rails to work in the era of the smoky, noisy steam locomotive. No wonder he looked so grumpy.

Although his business was in the city, “Lawyer Sam,” as he was called to distinguish him from grocer Sam (S.D.) Keeler, had a considerable influence on the town toward the end of the 19th Century and during the first third of the 20th.

“He was sharp, learned, without much humor, small of stature — but solid,” wrote longtime Ridgefield Press publisher Karl S. Nash in a 1971 profile of Keeler. Nash knew the man personally.

Born in 1845 in Wilton, Samuel Keeler had as one of his childhood teachers George E. Lounsbury, who later became governor and from whose brother he later acquired The Ridgefield Press. 

He began commuting to law work in the city soon after graduating from Yale in 1867, but eventually also became busy in Ridgefield, serving as a school board member for 20 years from 1892 until 1912, one of the burgesses of the borough, and a pillar of the First Congregational Church. 

In 1900, he was a founder of the First National Bank and Trust Company of Ridgefield (now Wells Fargo), and was later fifth president of the Ridgefield Savings Bank  (now Fairfield County Bank), serving from 1907 to his death. 

Early in the century, controlling interest in The Press was held by ex-Gov. Phineas Lounsbury, a staunch, tee-totaling Methodist who had ordered that no liquor advertising appear in the paper. One day, he picked up The Press and saw a liquor ad. Outraged, he immediately sold the newspaper to Keeler, “as staunch a Democrat as Mr. Lounsbury was a Republican,” Nash said years later. 

While he kept his feelings out of the news columns,  Keeler wasn’t afraid to take on Republicans editorially, and he fought a long battle with the administration over inequitable property assessments, going so far as to publish several pamphlets on the subject. He remained owner of the newspaper until his death, at which time The Press observed: “Mr. Keeler was a man who always minded his own business. In the wake of his course over the sea of life, there was no tacking or filling.”

Rev. Dr. David Short: 

Strict Disciplinarian

From the single, available picture of him, the Rev. David Short appears to bear out  a student’s description of him as “strict disciplinarian.”  Dr. Short must have been doing something right: During the dozen years he ran his little school on Main Street, he turned out two graduates who became Connecticut governors and one who was a U.S. Army general.

David Hawkins Short, D.D., was born in 1806, some say in the Southport section of Fairfield and others, in Derby.  In 1833, he graduated from Washington College in Hartford, now known as Trinity College. He must have been well-respected there; in the late 1850s, he was named a member of the Board of Fellows of the school. The board, which still exists today, was created  “as the college's examining body, ensuring that our high aspirations for academic accomplishment were realized,” the school says today. Around the same time, he was also awarded honorary membership in Phi Beta Kappa.

After Trinity, he headed to New York City where he received a doctor of divinity degree from the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He was ordained a deacon in 1836 and a priest a year later.

By 1838, he was serving as rector of both St. Paul’s Episcopal parish in Brookfield and St. James Church in Danbury; he remained at both until 1842, and then spent two years with North Salem and Somers, N.Y., parishes. Over the years he did stints as rector of  St. Mark’s in New Canaan, St. Matthew’s in Wilton, Christ Church in Redding, St. James in Winsted, and Grace Episcopal in East Windsor. From 1866 to 1872, he was “supplying different parishes,” according to an old church record, and his last assignment as a rector was from 1872 to 1876 in the Northford section of Branford.

Dr. Short was also rector of St. Stephen’s Church in Ridgefield, but lasted a mere five months in 1845-46.

“The resignations and short terms of many of the rectors in Ridgefield and elsewhere in the

diocese were not always the result of dissatisfaction between the rector and the parish, although this certainly was sometimes the case,” wrote Robert S. Haight in his history of St. Stephen’s. “The most important problem was the economic insecurity of the rector. The salary was so low that many rectors with families sometimes suffered severe deprivation and, of course, there was little they could do to provide for their old age.”

     Perhaps it was to help support a growing family and seek a new direction in life that David Short decided to open a private school here. Short had been through a lot of sadness before he came to Ridgefield. In 1837, he married Mary Emeline Gregory and a year later, tragedy struck. Records vary, but she apparently gave birth to at least one, possibly two, and maybe three children in August 1838. One or two of the babies died the same day. And Mary herself died four weeks later; she was only 22.

     In 1840, Short married Mary Elizabeth Purdy. They soon had a son, Isaac, who died as a child, and a son William, who became an Episcopal rector in Missouri and who died in 1905. 

Around 1844, the Shorts acquired a house on Main Street at the corner of King Lane where David decided to try teaching as a more reliable source of income. He established a private school for both boys and girls — co-ed schools were somewhat unusual for the era — and apparently met with some success. The school operated from at least 1844 to 1857.

Among its more illustrious graduates was Phineas C. Lounsbury, who was to become the 53rd governor of Connecticut.

“At twelve years of age, I began a four years’ course of study at a private school then kept by the Rev. David H. Short, an Episcopal clergyman, dean of Trinity College, a most competent instructor and a strict disciplinarian,” Lounsbury recalled in a 1908 speech. “Few graduated from that school without being prepared to enter any college in the land, or fitted, as far as schools can prepare the scholar, for life’s work. It was a blessing to the boys and girls of Ridgefield and the surrounding towns in more ways than one. A strict disciplinarian he was, but I doubt whether he was aware of all the little attentions going on outside, which I will not mention today as I see many of the young ladies here who attended school with me there.”

One can only imagine what those “little attentions” were.

No evidence has been found that Short was ever a “dean” at Trinity, and perhaps Lounsbury meant to say a “fellow.”

Historian George L. Rockwell never met Short, but did know many graduates of his school. While Lounsbury’s description of the school made the place seem harsh,  Rockwell offered a warmer view. “Dr. David H. Short, rector of St. Stephen’s Church, maintained a school of a very high character at his residence on the corner of King Lane and Main Street. Dr. Short, after resigning as rector, continued the school for many years. The steam-engine at the candle-stick factory just north was a great novelty, and Dr. Short’s students made daily trips to see it in operation.”

Among the graduates were not only Phineas Lounsbury, but also his brother George — also a governor — Army General David Perry, and D. Smith Gage, who became one of the town’s wealthiest businessmen in the 19th Century  (all three are profiled in Who Was Who).

By 1859, Short had left Ridgefield and was serving as a rector in Winsted, a community Litchfield County. His second wife, Mary, had died in 1853 and in 1859, he married Cornelia Sherwood. She was 30, he 52. Perhaps their marriage had something to do with his giving up teaching and returning to church work. A year later, they had a son, but he died at the age of 1.   In 1870, the census says he was living in Fairfield, the town where some records say he died in 1877 at the age of 70.

 In his last will and testament, Short left his furniture to his wife and daughter, Mary, and two black walnut bookcases full of books and writings to his minister son, William. He had no other property.

David Short is buried in a Fairfield cemetery beneath a stone that says, “Rested from his labors.”

Phineas C. Lounsbury: 

The Dry Governor

Although he was governor of Connecticut – the first of two Ridgefield brothers to run the state, Phineas Lounsbury is better remembered today as the man who built what’s now the Community Center, a building of several names. Officially titled the Veterans Memorial Community Center,  the place is also today called the Lounsbury Mansion. The governor himself, however, called the place Grovelawn. 

Born  in 1841 on the family farm, The Hickories, in Farmingville, Phineas Chapman Lounsbury attended the Farmingville Schoolhouse and later the Florida Schoolhouse as a boy. 

His parents were devout Methodists. Every Sunday, “we trudged over the three miles from the old homestead to the preaching service at half past ten in the Methodist church [on Main Street], Sunday school at noon, preaching service again at 1:30 in the afternoon, after which we walked back and spent the balance of the day with father in reading, meditation and prayer.”

Lounsbury got his equivalent of a high school education from the Rev. David H. Short’s private school at the corner of Main Street and King Lane and went on to graduate from Wesleyan University. 

As a young man he worked as a clerk in a New York City shoe store, learning the shoe

business. After the Civil War broke out, he enlisted as a volunteer in the 17th Connecticut Infantry in August 1862, but due to a serious illness he was honorably discharged that December.  While he left before his unit did any fighting, he became active after the war in the regiment’s veterans organization, serving as its president for a while. He “delivered a 42-minute oration at the dedication of a monument to the regiment at Gettysburg in 1884,” reports Jeremy Main in a profile of Lounsbury that appeared in The Ridgefield Press.

Lounsbury returned to Ridgefield where he joined his brother, George, in a shoe manufacturing company under the name of Lounsbury Brothers — their father, Nathan, had been both a farmer and a shoemaker, as had a sizable number of Ridgefielders of the mid-19th Century. The factory was at first located in New Haven, but later more conveniently in Norwalk.

“Phineas built ties with the New York banking society and sealed them by marrying Jenny Wright, daughter of Neziah Wright, a founder and treasurer of the American Bank Note Co.,” said Main. “Phineas joined the board of the Merchants Exchange Bank in New York and became its president in 1885.”

Over the years he also served as chairman of the board of Atlantic National Bank and on the boards of many other businesses, including Ridgefield’s First National Bank.  

He began his political career in 1874 when he was elected a state representative from Ridgefield. His knowledge of financial matters and his oratory skills led him to become a Republican party leader and, in 1887, he was elected governor of the state.

Main said that Lounsbury’s single term in office, from 1887 to 1889, “apparently was a quiet one, distinguished by the passage of ‘The Incorrigible Criminals Act.’ Much like contemporary ‘three strikes’ laws, his law mandated a 25-year sentence for those who committed for the third time a felony that carried a two-year sentence. Lounsbury made clear his harsh view of criminals by saying the prison would serve its purpose by ‘shutting up forever within its walls and behind its bolts and bars, the entire criminal class of the state.’ ”

Lounsbury may not have fought any battles in the Civil War and few in the state capital, but

he was in the middle of one of the fiercest fights in 19th Century Ridgefield’s government. In 1872, a new state law allowed towns to ban liquor sales, and there was a strong support in Ridgefield for outlawing  “licensing”  the sale of booze. Local petitioners  believed ‘‘the sale and use of a beverage of intoxicating liquors is a great curse of any community, productive of much of the crime and misery which affects society.’’

In Sept. 3, 1872, a Town Meeting voted 104 to 49 to ban the sale of intoxicating liquors in Ridgefield.  However, by April 1873, some Ridgefielders were getting thirsty. Twenty-five men turned in a petition to rescind the ‘‘no license’’ vote. 

On April 26, 1873, at probably one of the most ‘‘spirited’’ town meetings in Ridgefield history, voters were asked to rescind the ban on liquor sales. Phineas’s brother, George Lounsbury, later also a governor of Connecticut, moved that the selectmen be allowed to license the sale of ‘‘spirituous and intoxicating liquors, ale and lager beer.’’ 

Up stood Phineas Lounsbury. Unlike George, Phineas was a leader in the temperance efforts. He moved that the vote be taken by paper ballot and that the voting box be kept open for two hours, presumably to allow him to run up and down the village street to gather supporters. When the ballots were counted, 104 favored alcohol sales, and 111 opposed. Ridgefield remained dry.

Battles over prohibition continued for years, with Phineas Lounsbury always among the leaders of the teetotalers. Late in life, Lounsbury owned The Ridgefield Press and told its small staff never to run advertisements for alcohol. One day, he picked up the paper, saw a liquor ad and was so angry, he immediately sold the paper.

Despite their different views on alcohol, the brothers remained close. Speaking at Ridgefield’s Bicentennial celebration in 1908, Phineas called George “one of the best brothers that ever lived — one of God’s noblemen.” George had died four years earlier.

Lounsbury made contributions to the community, including donating in 1882 the land for and part of the building cost of the Center School on Bailey Avenue — he would probably be a bit disappointed that his gift to education is now a municipal parking lot. 

He also donated a fire engine, worth $1,000 (about $30,000 today), to the new fire department formed after the great fire of 1895 that destroyed much of the village (his house was only a few doors from the southern limit of that blaze, and he no doubt was especially sensitive to the need for fire protection).

“He was a generous, if somewhat ostentatious, donor to the Methodist Church,” reported Jeremy Main. “When the plate came around, he held up a $5 note so people could see how much he was giving.” (It was equivalent to more than $140 today).

After the war, Lounsbury bought an old Main Street house, possibly dating from the 1700s, that had held three generations of physicians named Perry (profiled in Who Was Who). He  renovated

the colonial-style building into a snazzy Victorian with mansard roof. However, attending the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, Lounsbury was impressed with the stately design of the Connecticut Building, and decided he’d like a new house of similar design. To make room for the new place, he moved his old house to Governor Street, where it served as a boarding house and then office building until it was torn down in 2014 to make way for the Ridgefield Visiting Nurse Association headquarters.

Grovelawn was completed in 1896. It had a staff of 14 people indoors, and 12 for the grounds, which included almost all of today’s Veterans Park block, plus where the Boys and Girls Club is now.  He also had places in upper New York State and in Florida where he’d spend parts of the summer and winter.

Lounsbury died at Grovelawn in 1925 at the age of 81. In his obituary, The Press said: “His career was notable and brilliant. … By his masterly insight into public questions and oratorical powers [he] became a recognized power.”

Lounsbury had no children, and his estate was left to a niece who had little interest in living at Grovelawn. The house sat unused for almost 30 years. As World War II came to an end in 1945, the town voted to buy the property as a memorial to veterans, and created the Ridgefield Veterans Memorial Park. However, it wasn’t until 1953 that the mansion was leased to the Veterans Memorial Community Association, a private non-profit group that would run the building as a place for meetings, classes, social events, youth camps, a rifle range, a nursery school, and even a teen center.

One of the more unusual features of the property is a bell mounted on pedestal. Cast in 1845 in Ohio, the bell had been gathered, perhaps from a schoolhouse,  during a Confederate Army scrap drive, to be turned into weaponry. The scap collection was captured by a Connecticut unit led by Colonel Alexander Warner. Painted on the bell were the words: “This bell is to be melted into a cannon — may it kill a thousand Yankees.” Warner bought the bell from the Army, kept it for a number of years and eventually gave it to Governor Lounsbury.

The bell was rung to mark the signing of the armistice at the end of World War I and again, in September 1945 to mark the end of fighting in World War II.

George L. Rockwell:

Mr. History

For George Rockwell, a man of several careers, history was a hobby. But it is not for his vocations, but for his “History of Ridgefield” that Rockwell is remembered today. Its 583 pages, published in 1927, provide a comprehensive look at the town’s first two centuries.

“That history is a reflection of the man, his interests, his family, his devotion to his beloved community,” Press Editor Karl S. Nash once wrote. 

A descendant of Jonathan Rockwell, one of the founders of the town, George Lounsbury Rockwell was born in 1869 in New Haven, but came to Farmingville as a boy. He lived with his uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. George E. Lounsbury — George was to become a Connecticut governor. The Lounsbury house and farm, The Hickories, later became Rockwell’s own home and is today still a working farm.

In 1888, Rockwell went to work for his uncle’s shoe factory in South Norwalk, remaining there 21 years and serving as a partner the last 16 years. 

By the turn of the 20th Century, he was active in town and state politics. He served as state representative in 1904 and in 1937, as town treasurer,  as a member of the first Board of Finance in 1921, and as a justice of the peace. In 1904, he was a Connecticut delegate to the Republican National Convention that nominated Theodore Roosevelt. 

His work for the GOP won him appointments as Ridgefield postmaster from 1912 to 1916 and again from 1924 to 1935 (his son, George L. Jr., was postmaster from 1949 to 1953). 

President Taft named him U.S. deputy consulate general at Montreal in 1910 and he served there two years. 

In 1938, he made an unsuccessful bid to be Fourth District congressman on the Republican ticket. 

His “History of Ridgefield” was published in 1927, the same year the town marked the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Ridgefield. The book contains much information on the early settlement of the town, the Revolution, the community’s churches, schools, industries, and notable people. Some sections of the book had originally appeared as features by Rockwell in The Ridgefield Press over the first quarter of the century. 

“He left no avenue unexplored, and considerable effort went into correspondence, personal interviews, examination of old records, and the study of countless tombstones,” wrote Smithsonian historian Silvio A. Bedini, author of “Ridgefield in Review.”

Rockwell’s history is also known for its extensive and detailed listings of Ridgefield veterans of all the wars from the French and Indian through World War I. Rockwell also provides many early

1700s birth, marriage and death records, as well as listings of town officials from Ridgefield’s founding onward.

The volume is extensively illustrated with photos, mostly taken by Joseph Hartmann.

Rockwell had 1,500 copies of his book printed, some bound in leather, but most in cloth. Original copies today are rare, and can cost hundreds of dollars. A 1979 hardbound reprint of the book can be found used for anywhere from $25 to $175.

Rockwell died in 1947 at the age of 78. His first wife, Grace Frances Greaves Rockwell, died in 1903 at the age of 26, and his second wife, Anna D. Ryan Rockwell, was an aunt of Pat Ryan Nixon, wife of the president. She died in 1943.

Though history was an avocation,  George Rockwell was well-known and respected for his knowledge of Connecticut’s past, so much so that Duquesne University in Pittsburgh invited him to speak on the Western Reserve, originally part of Connecticut, at its 1938 commencement. Though he had never gone to college, the university awarded him an honorary doctor of laws degree.

The Steele Family: 

Early Black Ridgefielders 

Although a few black slaves and freemen had lived in Ridgefield in the 18th and early 19th Centuries,  the first home-owning black family to settle here may have been the Steeles of Farmingville.

According to research done by Keith Jones for his book, “The Farms of Farmingville,” in 1865 Isaac Hart Steele of North Salem, N.Y., paid $300 to William Lee for a small, already antique house on two acres along what is now Limekiln Road. Located  just south of Poplar Road, the house still stands today.

Jones says there were indications the Steele family may have been living there as early as 1859. That is when his daughter, Mary E. Steele, was born to his first wife, Sarah A. Steele. Sarah died in 1862 at the age of 32, and by 1865 when the the house purchase took place, Isaac was married to Catherine “Katie” Pines Steele.

Isaac Hart Steele’s home sat on two acres of limestone ledge, making it unsuitable for farming, Jones said. To earn an income, Steele worked on neighboring farms, including that of Azariah Smith. Apparently his abilities at farming gained a reputation for excellence because Steele was hired to oversee the fields on Gov. George E. Lounsbury’s large farm, The Hickories. 

His wife,  Katie, may have worked as a member of the household staff at The Hickories, Jone said. Her step-daughter, Mary, may also have worked for the governor; when she died in 1933, her occupation was listed as “servant” in the town’s death records.

Mary E. Steele was born in 1859, possibly in the Limekiln Road house, and attended school in the old Farmingville Schoolhouse near the site of today’s Farmingville School.

She told an interviewer in the 1920s  that her ancestors had lived in the North Salem area since the 1700s, and recalled hearing her great-grandmother tell of attending a gathering in North Salem during the Revolution when General Washington and General Lafayette and their staffs stopped for refreshments on their way to Hartford. Aunt Sibby Sickle had also been present when the French Army under General Rochambeau passed through North Salem and Ridgebury. 

Town Historian Richard E. Venus knew Mary Steele in her later years. She was “a nice little old lady that everyone thought the world of,” he recalled in 1983. “She was a very pleasant and cultured person.

“Mary did a lot of walking and always dressed in a black dress with large white collar and a black straw hat with a white band. If she happened to be going by at meal time, she was always invited in to eat with the family.”

Venus said Mary Steele “told wonderful stories. She was a great storyteller and a most interesting person to listen to.”

The Steele family belonged to St. Stephen’s Church.

Katie Steele died in 1889. Three years later, Isaac Hart Steele sold the Farmingville property for $712, more than twice what he paid, and bought a place on Danbury Road near where Adam Broderick is now. He lived there for a while, eventually returning to North Salem, where he died in 1921 at the age of 87. 

Mary remained in Ridgefield, living in an apartment over a store on Main Street, a little north of where Books on the Common is now. In January 1932, she was asleep when a fire broke out in a nearby apartment. She was rescued by firefighters. 

She died nearly two years later, in December 1933, at the age of 75.

Mary, along with father Isaac, mother Sarah and step-mother Katie, are buried with other members of the Steele family in the historic June Cemetery on June Road in North Salem.

The old Steele homestead on Limekiln Road included a barn, now converted into a house, that stands only a couple of feet from the edge of the road’s pavement  — perhaps closer to a road than any house in town. Keith Jones reported that he was told by a former owner that a mid-1980s town road crew worker was “reluctant to enter the building, reciting local tradition that the attic was haunted by the ghost of an old, white-haired man who could be seen hovering behind [the] gable window. 

“Perhaps, the attic ghost — if there really is one — is the heart-broken spirit of Hart Steele in search of his wife, Catherine, both of whom barely scratched a living from this small, limestone infested property,” Keith Jones wrote.

Dr. Blandina Worcester Brewster: 

Early Woman Physician

A respected physician when relatively few women were practicing medicine, Dr. Blandina Worcester was “one of the pioneer women doctors of this country, her example having inspired other women to enter the profession,” The Ridgefield Press reported in 1984 when she died at the age of 82. 

Dr. Worcester was not only a leading pediatrician in New York City, but also a professor of pediatrics at a top university. 

What’s more, she and her husband established a family that 80 years later, is a significant part of Ridgefield’s life.

A native of Geneva, N.Y., Dr. Worcester was born in 1902, graduated from Radcliffe College in 1923, and from Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1927. During her internship at Johns Hopkins, she worked with the Frontier Nursing Service in rural Kentucky, riding to her patients on horseback. 

She established a practice of pediatrics in New York City in the 1930s, was on the attending staff at Bellevue Hospital’s Children’s Medical Service from 1933 until 1968, was medical director at The New York Infirmary for many years, and was a professor of clinical pediatrics at New York University’s Medical School for 38 years. 

In 1935, she married Carroll H. Brewster, a lawyer and partner of Davis Polk in New York City, and a year later, the couple bought the Farmingville farm that had been “The Hickories,” the home of George H. Lounsbury (also profiled in Who Was Who), governor of Connecticut. When the Brewsters bought the place, it had recently been used as a private girls school.

Dr. Worcester — she used that name throughout her career — lived in New York and spent summers and weekends here until her retirement in 1971, after which she moved fulltime to Ridgefield. 

She was a voracious reader but in her last few years, became nearly blind. Nonetheless, she continued to play bridge with some of her many Ridgefield friends.

Dr. Worcester was also a woman of scholarship and a keen mind, and both of her two sons became leaders in academia. When he retired in 1999, the Rev. John Gurdon Brewster had been Episcopal chaplain at Cornell University for 34 years — a position he held longer than any other university Episcopal chaplain in the country. He is also a sculptor and his work is in many collections, including Union Theological Center and The Vatican.

Carroll Worcester Brewster, a Yale Law School graduate, was a dean at Dartmouth, and then president of Hollins College. He was later president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, his mother’s birthplace (she was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters there in 1983).  

In 1966, Carroll Brewster became a member of the Ridgefield Conservation Commission. He resigned in 1969 to pursue careers that included legal counsel to the government of Sudan, as well as college leadership. On his retirement, he returned to Ridgefield and rejoined the Conservation Commission in 2000 and is still serving today — a half century after he began the job.

Carroll Brewster lives on the family farm, whose development rights the family deeded to the town in 1996, preserving more than 100 acres in Farmingville. 

His daughter, Dina, resurrected The Hickories as an organic farm in the early 2000s, and continues to run the operation, now the largest and one of the last working farms in Ridgefield.