Chicken Warrups: 

The Chief with A Past

When the settlers began building the town in 1708 or so, they weren’t the only “newcomers”: A number of American Indians had only recently arrived in the neighborhood. Chicken’s Rock, a large outcropping alongside the Martin Park bathing beach at Great Pond, recalls their leader, Chicken or Chickens Warrups, one of the territory’s most colorful characters in the days of the pioneers.  

“A large rock on the shores of Great Pond ... is still called Chickens’ Rock, as it was a favorite spot where the old warrior used to sit,” Ridgefield historian George L. Rockwell wrote in 1927. 

In his “History of Fairfield County” (1881), D. Hamilton Hurd said a “tract of land embraced within the bounds of the present town of Redding was claimed by a small and unimportant tribe of Indians, composed of a few stragglers or disaffected members of the Potatucks of Newtown, the Paugusetts of Milford, and the Mohawks of New York. This motley tribe was presided over by a chief bearing the euphonious name of Chicken Warrups, or Sam Mohawk, as he was sometimes called. It is supposed that he was a sagamore or under-chief of the powerful Mohawks, one of the tribes of the celebrated league of the Iroquois which inhabited New York, and who for some reason fled from his tribe and settled on Greenfield Hill. Here he killed an Indian and fled to Redding. He was a shrewd, cunning and important character in the early history of the town” of Fairfield. (Back then, Redding was part of northern Fairfield.)

Researcher Franklyn Bearce, who considered himself a descendant of Chicken Warrups, maintains Hurd’s account of a murder in Fairfield is incorrect, and tells a more colorful tale of homicide. 

“In his youth Chicken first killed an Onandaga youth of nonroyal blood over a girl, and the Grand Council banished him from the Five Nations; had he not been of noble Iroquois blood, he would have paid [for] the murder with his life. After he was banished and took the trail, he drifted into Connecticut, and … was captured by the Ramapoos, and his life was saved when the daughter [of] Catoonah claimed him for a husband.” That’s the same Catoonah or Katonah who was the Indian leader who sold the Ridgefield settlers their first 20,000 acres in 1708.  

In 1714, Chicken Warrups sold a sizable piece of land in the Lonetown area of Redding, then

part of Fairfield, to John Read, an attorney after whom Reading, later Redding, was named. Warrups subsequently sold other tracts to the settlers, but in a 1725 deed, he reserved “liberty for myself and my heirs to hunt, fish, and fowl upon the land and in the waters, and further reserving for myself, my children, and grandchildren and their posterity the use of so much land by my present dwelling house or wigwam as ... necessary for my or their personal improvement, that is to say, my children, children’s children and posterity.” 

Over the years, however, Warrups battled with the colonists over details of the agreements he’d signed, and on several occasions he petitioned Connecticut’s colonial leaders to clear up his problems. In “The History of Redding, Connecticut,” Charles Burr Todd says the chief “seems to have been a strange mixture of Indian shrewdness, rascality and cunning, and was in continual difficulties with the settlers concerning the deeds which he gave them.”

Warrups also provoked some fear. In 1720, according to colonial records, there was a rumor that he had “lately received two belts of wampumpeag from certain remote Indians—as it is said, to the west of Hudson River —with a message expressing their desire to come and live in this colony…” 

That rumor sparked “considerable apprehensions of danger from Indians, fearing that the belts have been sent on some bad design”—namely, plans to invade the “frontier towns” like Redding, Ridgefield and Danbury. The governor and the colony council ordered a meeting with Warrups about the “threat” and while Todd found no official record of what happened, one can assume that no Indian invasion occurred, and none probably was ever contemplated by the natives themselves.

Any concerns about Chicken Warrups came to an end in 1749 when the chief took John Read’s offer of 200 acres near the Schaghticoke Reservation along the Housatonic River in Kent, giving up any rights to his old lands in Redding. It is said Warrups found the fishing and hunting better in Kent. He died about 1765. He was survived by a son, Tom Warrups, who served with the American forces in the Revolutionary War, enlisting from Redding.

The Warrups family continued to create concerns in Redding long after Chicken’s death. In 1815 Redding selectmen noted in their minutes, “Eunice Warrups, an Indian woman, was born in this town, is upwards of 70 years old; has been absent 50 years; came from New Milford, she says, 1st day of Nov; came to this town; was warned to depart.” Towns back then were finicky about whom they admitted. They feared indigents; under law, once indigents had established themselves in a community, the selectmen could become responsible for their welfare. 

Hence, the tight-fisted officials in towns like Redding and Ridgefield often ordered indigents to leave before they could become welfare cases.  Eunice may have been a daughter or granddaughter of Tom Warrups, that Revolutionary veteran. If so, one would have thought she’d have been better treated.

While Chicken’s Rock is in Ridgefield, within an arrow’s shot of Redding, it may once have been within a small wedge of Redding land that projected into Ridgefield and that had been part of “Governor Fitch’s Farm,” a 120-acre tract that was in both towns. As a result of a 1786 petition to the General Assembly, this wedge—including perhaps the rock—became Ridgefield territory.

Incidentally, in the eastern side of the town of Westport (also once part of Fairfield) lies Machamux Park, a small open space between Green’s Farms Road and I-95 near the Beachside Avenue curve. A plaque on a large boulder in the park reports, “The name according to legend means ‘the beautiful land’ and was named by Chickens, a young sachem who settled here.”

Edward Jones: 

Hanged As A Spy

War is hell, and some of the hell of war seems almost beyond belief. In the case of a Ridgefield man convicted of being a spy during the Revolutionary War, some of the story of his final moments may well be beyond belief.

Edward Jones had immigrated to the United States from his native Wales and had settled in Ridgefield in around 1770. Since he had so recently left his native land, it was not surprising that when the war broke out, he felt a loyalty to King George III.

While there were quite a few Tories in Ridgefield, the majority of the town had voted to support the Continental Congress (though not as quickly as other area towns). Loyalists were often harassed and sometimes even attacked. Jones was probably concerned for his safety, and after the British took control of New York City, he moved there and became a butcher for the British army.

According to later testimony, he was sent one winter day in 1779 into Westchester County to buy cattle to supply meat for the British forces but was discovered behind continental lines in Ridgefield. He was arrested for spying on the operations of General Israel Putnam’s encampment in nearby Redding.

Jones claimed he had gotten lost and did not know he was in Connecticut.

According to Redding historian Charles Burr Todd, General Putnam had been angry over both “desertions, which had thinned his ranks, and Tory spies, who frequented his camps, under every variety of pretext, and forthwith conveyed the information thus gathered to the enemy. To put a stop to this, it had been determined that the next offender of either sort captured should suffer death as an example.”

On the espionage front, Jones was that next offender.

Jone’s court martial was convened Feb. 4, 1779, and, “pressured by Putnam’s desire to return discipline to the ranks, was not inclined to believe that he had innocently wandered into the state, especially in the area around Ridgefield that he knew well, and he was sentenced to death,” wrote Daniel Cruson in “Putnam’s Revolutionary War Winter Encampment,” published in 2011.

After the verdict, Putnam ordered Jones executed late on the morning of Friday, Feb. 12,  “by hanging him by the neck until he is Dead, Dead, Dead.”

“From the orders, it is clear that there was to be no question of his physical state after the sentence was carried out,” Cruson said.

On the same day, John Smith, a teenaged Continental soldier who was caught fleeing to British lines, was also sentenced to be executed. However, as a deserter, he would be shot instead of hanged. (Smith was the basis of the fictionalized character, Sam, in the acclaimed 1974 young adult novel, “My Brother Sam Is Dead,” which described life in the Revolutionary War period in this area and has been read by countless Ridgefield students over the years.)

Both Jones and Smith were jailed in a house on Umpawaug Hill in West Redding. Often, locals would show up outside the house and taunt the prisoners. That prompted General Putnam on Feb. 10 to issue an order that no one be allowed near the prisoners “as frequent complaints have been made that they are interrupted in their private devotions by people who come for no other reason than to insult them.”

It seems a very humane order. Yet one account of the execution portrayed an event anything but humane.

John Warner Barber’s book, “Connecticut Historical Collections,” published in 1838,  reported that the hangman had disappeared from camp on the day of the execution, possibly because he found the task distasteful.

A makeshift gallows was set up that required its victim to climb a 20-foot ladder and stand on top with a rope tied from his neck to a cross-beam. The ladder would be jerked away, and the condemned man would fall to his death.

With no executioner at hand, General Putnam reportedly ordered Jones to jump from the ladder — in effect, committing suicide.

“No, General Putnam,” Jones is said to have replied. “I am innocent of the crime laid to my charge; I shall not do it.”

Barber’s account says that Putnam then ordered two 12-year-old boys who were somehow part of the audience to knock over the ladder on which Jones stood.

“These boys were deeply affected with the trying scene,” Barber wrote. “They cried and sobbed loudly, and earnestly entreated to be excused from doing anything on this distressing occasion. Putnam, drawing his sword, ordered them forward and compelled them at the sword’s point to obey his orders.”

The boys then followed the command, and Jones was hanged.

Barber said the account of the execution came from “an aged inhabitant of Reading [Redding], who was present on the occasion and stood but a few feet from Jones when he was executed.”

Other histories, including Lorenzo Sabine in his 1864 “Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution” and Todd’s 1906 “History of Redding,” repeat this story.

However, Todd points out that G.H. Hollister, in his “History of Connecticut,” disputes the account, and cites eyewitnesses, including the Rev. Jonathan Bartlett.

In 1855 at the age of 90, Bartlett “well remembers the Revolutionary encampment at Redding and frequently visited it. He is sure that the story in Barber’s ‘Historical Collections’ about Putnam’s inhumanity at the execution of Smith and Jones is incorrect. 

“Though not present himself, he has often heard his father relate the incidents of the occasion; and furthermore he once called the attention of Colonel Asahel Salmon (who died in 1848, aged 91), who was a sergeant in attendance upon the execution, to the statement, and he declared that nothing of the kind took place.”

The Rev. Thomas F. Davies, another historian, also pooh-poohs the account. “Mr. Barber must have been misinformed,” he said in 1839. “Reading is my native town and from my boyhood, I have heard the history of the proceedings on the occasion referred to, and was much surprised at the statements in the ‘Historical Collections.’ The Rev. Bartlett, whose father was chaplain on that occasion, informs me that General Putnam could not have been guilty of the acts there charged.”

Finally, James Olmstead of Redding, who died in 1882 at the age of 89, wrote in the Danbury News that his father, “being an officer himself and well known to some of the officers on duty, was one of the few who were admitted within the enclosure formed by the troops around the place of execution and able to witness all that there took place….He was within a few feet of the scaffold when Jones, pale and haggard, was next brought on, his death warrant was read, and he seemed to recognize some few of his old friends, but said very little except to bid farewell to all, and his last words, which were, ‘God knows I’m not guilty,’ and was hurried into eternity.

“My father had a pretty good general knowledge of General Putnam and his eccentricities, and had there been any unnecessary hardships or severity used in the treatment of the prisoners, he most certainly must have seen and known something of it, but in all I ever heard from him or anyone else, no allusion was made to anything of the kind, and in view of all the circumstances I think it may be safe to infer that no such thing occurred on that occasion.”

Tradition was that those hanged at the gallows were buried at the structure’s foot, and it’s believed that both Jones and Smith were buried at the execution site on what is today known as Gallows Hill. It’s just east of today’s intersection of Gallows Hill Road and Whortleberry Drive in Redding.

Howard Fast: 

Prolific Novelist

Ridgefield has been home to countless writers, but few as prolific as Howard Fast. 

The high school dropout published his first novel before he was 20 and by the turn of the 21st Century, had written more than 80 books of fiction and nonfiction under his own name and a series of mysteries as E.V. Cunningham. Literally millions of copies of Fast titles have been printed in a dozen languages, and many have stayed in print for years. 

Despite all this output, he took the time out to write a regular column for his local paper.v“Howard is bored to death when he's not writing,” said his wife, Bette, in a 1989 Ridgefield Press interview. 

Born in 1914 in New York City, the son of a factory worker,  Fast produced his first novel, “Two Valleys,” in 1933 when he was 18 years old and hitching rides around the country, looking for work. 

Six years later, when he was 24, his novel about Valley Forge, “Conceived in Liberty,” was published, sold a   million copies and was translated into more than 10 languages.

During World War II, he wrote copy for the Voice of America, working for the U.S. Office of War Information. 

Because of the poverty his family experienced when he was a child, he said,  he joined the Communist Party in 1943, a fact that later got him blacklisted; even his famous patriotic book, “Citizen Tom Paine” (1943), long a classroom classic, was banned for a while in the New York City schools because he was a communist. 

He was jailed for three months in 1950 for refusing to disclose some names before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In 1952, he ran for Congress on the American Labor Party ticket.

Because he was blacklisted, he had to self-publish what became probably his most famous book, “Spartacus.” He also wrote the screenplay of the Stanley Kubrick movie starring starring Kirk Douglas with score by Ridgefielder Alex North. (North also wrote the music for “Cheyenne Autumn,” made from Fast’s novel, “The Last Frontier.”)

Most of his books were historical novels, many of them based on true stories. Another was “Freedom Road,” which was turned into a 1979 TV mini-series starring Muhammad Ali as an ex-slave who became a U.S. senator.

In 1956, he broke with the Communist Party and began a renewed career.  “I was part of a generation that believed in socialism and finally found that belief corroded and destroyed," The New York Times reported him saying in 1981. “That is not renouncing Communism or socialism. It's reaching a certain degree of enlightenment about what the Soviet Union practices. To be dogmatic about a cause you believe in at the age of 20 or 30 is not unusual. But to be dogmatic at age 55 or 60 shows a lack of any learning capacity.”

Fast lived on Florida Hill Road in the 1960s and early 1970s when he moved to Redding, and among the books he wrote while here was “The Hessian” (1972), a Revolutionary War novel set in and around Ridgefield. As are several of his classics, it is still taught in many schools today. 

Among his other popular books are “April Morning” and “The Immigrants.”  

Over his lifetime he also wrote stage plays, screenplays, television plays, poetry, non-fiction books for children, popular political biographies including two books on Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito, and a history of the Jews.

In 1980, the Fasts moved to Greenwich where he died in 2003 at the age of 88.

“The only thing that infuriates me,” he once said, “is that I have more unwritten stories in me than I can conceivably write in a lifetime.” 

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.