John Copp: 

He Helped the Settlers

Anyone who’s lived in Ridgefield knows its largest shopping center, Copps Hill Plaza. But few know Copps Hill, the ridge north of Copps Hill Road and east of North Street, including the Stonecrest and Mimosa neighborhoods. Fewer have heard of Copp himself, John Copp that is. And yet, Dr. Copp was one of the most accomplished people involved in early Ridgefield.

Copp is not a common name in the United States. Nor is it in England, from which William Copp set sail in 1635 for Boston. William was a cordwainer, a worker in leather, and became a well-to-do businessman, owning two houses and much land. William Copp’s nine children included David, who was also a leading citizen. He died in 1713 and is buried in what is still called the Copps Hill Burying Ground near the Boston Common. His friends, Increase and Cotton Mather, are also buried there.

His son, John Copp, was born in 1673 and, while in his 20’s, migrated to Connecticut. His name first turns up in 1698 in Stamford. Norwalk records report that in 1701, a town meeting hired him as schoolmaster. 

John Copp was also among the first medical doctors in the state. He received his medical license in 1710 or 1711, and was appointed a surgeon with a Connecticut regiment that was to march to Port Royal in Canada to fight the French.

As early as 1697, residents of Norwalk were becoming interested in the American Indian land 15 miles north. John Copp had learned surveying from his father, and around 1708, drew up boundaries for 20,000 acres, roughly the south two thirds of the present town. In September 1708, Copp and two other men, representing Ridgefield’s first 26 settling families, paid the Indians 100 pounds for this “first purchase” of land.

Copp was elected recorder—now called town clerk—by Ridgefield’s first town meeting in 1709. He helped lay out the town and its Main Street, acted as a physician, and became the first school teacher, instructing the children in a small meeting house somewhere near the present Methodist church. 

Although the hill was named for him, Copp had no land in Ridgefield.  He remained a Norwalk resident and probably stayed here for periods with settling families. 

Copp’s last entry in the town records came in 1713 when the Rev. Thomas Hauley, who had just become the town’s first minister, succeeded him at both recording and teaching.

Before, during and after his work with Ridgefield, Dr. Copp was active in the civic and ecclesiastical life of Norwalk, of Fairfield County, and of Connecticut, serving as state representative, county surveyor, and a church deacon. Copp’s name is kept alive in Norwalk where Copps Island lies just off the harbor; he once owned it.

In the 1720s, Copp had a farm in the Wilton section Georgetown, then part of Norwalk, but probably did not live there. Nonetheless, the southeast corner of Ridgefield—now Branchville—was called Copp’s Corner back then.  That name did not last long, however.

John Copp’s name made its final known appearance in Ridgefield records in 1739 when he came to town to attend the installation of the new Congregational minister, 26-year-old Jonathan Ingersoll. Mr. Hauley had died the year before.

John Copp died in 1751 at the exceedingly old age of 78, and is buried in the East Norwalk Historical Cemetery. His slate stone notes as his accomplishment in life that he was “Deacon of ye first church in this place.” 

Ruth Hurzeler: 

Breaking Down A Barrier

One of the town’s most important jobs is that of the town clerk, the person who records and preserves all of Ridgefield’s important data and documents. 

The town clerk’s office is the official repository of the records of births, marriages, deaths, and burials;  the countless documents that deal with the land and its ownership such as warrantee deeds, mortgages, liens, and releases, as well survey maps; and the minutes of all meetings of every board and commission. The town clerk supervises elections and send the results of the secretary of the state; distributes and receives absentee ballots; posts notices of government meetings; and maintains records of all town ordinances, regulations and charters. All town officials are sworn in by the town clerk or the clerk’s assistants.  The town clerk can swear you in as a new voter, issue you a marriage license, and sell you a license to fish, hunt or trap. If you’re a dog, the town clerk will sell your owner a tag.

The first town clerk was John Copp, who had also laid out the village settlement and was Ridgefield’s first teacher. And for more than 230 years, every single one of the 18 people who succeeded him as town clerk was a man. Then along came Ruth Hurzeler, and ever since, every town clerk has been female. It was one of the first traditionally male offices to be won by a woman.

Ruth Mildred Hurzeler was born in Bethel in 1917, a daughter of Swiss-German parents — Rudolph and Pauline Hurzeler — who operated the Ridgefield Bakery in the space now occupied by Planet Pizza (and long the home of Roma Pizzeria). 

After graduation from Ridgefield High School, she worked at the bakery, but in 1946 took an appointed position as assistant town clerk under Judge George G. Scott. When Scott decided to retire in 1949, Hurzeler was one of several people who ran for the office. She received the Republican

nomination without difficulty and in the October 1949 election (municipal elections were a month earlier than state and national elections back then), she handily defeated Democrat Susan C. Duncan, 999 to 586. She won the seat even though the top of the ticket was taken by a Democrat, Harry E. Hull, who received almost the same plurality for first selectman as Hurzeler did for town clerk.

Two years later, she defeated soon-to-be Postmaster Richard E. Venus (who later became town historian) by the wide margin of 1,157 to 662.

She went on to win every biennial election until the early 1970s when one of the great campaign battles of 20th Century Ridgefield was waged. A young woman named Terry Leary decided to take on the seemingly entrenched Hurzeler in the 1971 election. Leary came close, amassing 2,239 votes to Hurzeler’s 2,461. Although Leary lost, the Democratic party saw the potential for a victory in two years. In 1973, she ran again, making the town clerk’s salary her major campaign theme — a theme that appealed to both Democrats and some fiscal-minded Republicans and unaffiliateds. 

For centuries, town clerks had been compensated by the state-defined fees they charged people who were filing documents, particularly deeds and mortgages. In the 18th, 19th and early 20th Centuries, that usually didn’t amount to much, since relatively few land transfers took place. But when the Ridgefield building boom began in the 1950s, thousands of warrantee deeds, mortgage deeds, and many other land-related documents were being filed — and the income of the town clerk increased manifold.

Leary focused her campaign on making the job salaried. She estimated that Hurzeler was taking in more than $100,000 in fees that could instead go to the town coffers or to cover operating costs of the office. Hurzeler refused to reveal how much she earned in fees, saying that was her own

business, and she maintained that it was the age-old, statutory, and fair way to compensate the job. However, she said in 1972 she would be willing to be salaried, if the salary properly compensated all the work the job required. She said she did as much as a first selectman, and that job was paying $20,000 at the time (equivalent to about $116,000 in 2017 dollars).

In 1973, which would have been Hurzeler’s 13th term in office, she lost the election to Leary, who prevailed by a sizable margin, 3,350 to 2,812 — probably helped a bit by riding the coattails of Louis J. Fossi, a popular Democrat who won a landslide victory for first selectman. But clearly the salary issue was important, and Leary immediately asked the Board of Selectmen to propose that the office be salaried. The voters eventually agreed.

“We at the newspaper, who have known Miss Hurzeler for years, have received valuable and continuing assistance and cooperation from her,” a Ridgefield Press editorial said in 1974 as she was leaving office. “Some of us have tangled with her, a not unusual occurrence when strong wills come up against one another, but such occasions have left no lasting ill-will. Actually, the town clerk has had to rule with a strong hand, else things would have gotten out of hand. Many do not know of the lots of little things she had done for people, of the cases in which she has gone out of her way to be helpful.”

Hurzeler maintained the day after the election that she would run again in two years, but ill health prevented her from doing so. She remained an influential member of her party, and was vice-chairman of the Republican Town Committee when she died in 1977 at the age of 60. 

At a her retirement party in January 1974, newly elected First Selectman Fossi praised her years of hard work. “No one in Ridgefield … does not appreciate the efforts and quality of your work and your dedication over the years,” he said, adding that she would now have time to relax, enjoy life and travel.

“Now that I have time to take a trip,” replied Hurzeler with a smile, “there’s no gas.”

The nation was in the midst of the first great “oil crisis,” thanks to an OPEC embargo sparked by the Yom Kippur War.