Charles A. Goodrich: 

A Place in History  

As parents,  Samuel and Elizabeth Goodrich must have been amazing. One of their children, Samuel — better known as Peter Parley — produced more than 100 books for children and adults in the 19th Century and hobnobbed with some of the literary greats of his era. 

A daughter, Abigail, became one of America’s first female magazine editors and provided information and advice to countless 19th Century families. 

And a son, Charles, wrote more than two dozen books of history, geography and religion that helped educate generations of Americans.

For both Abigail and Samuel, their only formal education was the little red schoolhouse on West Lane in Ridgefield, ending in the eighth grade. Charles was a bit more fortunate: He went to Yale after West Lane.

Charles Augustus Goodrich was born in Ridgefield in 1790. His father, the Rev. Samuel G. Goodrich, was the third minister of the First Congregational Church. His mother, Elizabeth Ely Goodrich, was a member of one of Connecticut’s founding families. His more famous brother, Samuel, was three years younger, and his sister Abigail, two years older.

They all grew up at first in a house on West Lane and later a larger home still standing today on High Ridge at the head of Parley Lane.

After graduating from Yale in 1812, Charles Goodrich studied theology and was ordained in 1816. His first post was at the First Congregational Church in Worcester, Mass. In 1820, after dealing with much “acrimonious controversy” involving local church politics, he left Worcester and headed for Berlin, Conn., to which his parents had by then moved. There he helped a local parish while beginning to write magazine articles and books. Many of the latter he did in association with his brother, Samuel, who lived in Boston. 

Among his first books was History of the United States of America,  published in 1822. It quickly became one of the most popular history textbooks in the nation, and was used in many schools across the country until more than 30 years after his death. The New York Times called it “one of our best standard school books.”

Other popular books were Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence (1829) and A Child’s History of the United States, first published in 1855. Both were being reprinted long after he died. Being a minister he also wrote books on religious themes, one of the most popular being Geography of the Chief Places Mentioned in the Bible (1855).

His interests also included politics and Goodrich served as a Connecticut state senator from Berlin in 1838. He moved to Hartford, home of his ancestors, in 1848 and died there in 1862 at the age of 71.  An obituary in The New York Times called him “a very gifted man and a most accomplished scholar. His mental organization was active, though of that sensitive nature which caused him to shrink from rough contact with the world. Mr. Goodrich’s love for his fellow men was refined, charitable, and of the most enlarged order.”

Today,  what is perhaps Charles Goodrich’s most famous legacy is a motto still often heard. Various authorities say he popularized “A place for everything and everything in its place,” by being the first person to have used the concept in print — in an 1827 magazine article on “Neatness.”

His version wasn’t quite as pithy as today’s epigram, however. He wrote:  “Have a place for every thing, and keep every thing in its proper place.” 

Col. Philip Burr Bradley: 

A Post-Revolutionary Pillar

The commanding presence of  Philip Burr Bradley frightened a young “Peter Parley” two centuries ago. And while Samuel G. Goodrich was far from the only one who cowered in the presence of the prominent Ridgefield leader,  Colonel Bradley was nonetheless a pillar of the community when the community, state and nation needed pillars.

 Bradley, who had commanded the Fifth Connecticut Regiment during the Revolutionary War, was one of two former military officers who led Ridgefield in the early years of the nation. He was a super-conservative Federalist while his neighbor down the street, General Joshua King, was more democratic in his outlook on people and government (and who is profiled elsewhere on Old Ridgefield).

Both owned a lot of property and both commanded respect, but Bradley was often feared as well as respected while King was more warm and friendly to all.

Philip Burr Bradley was born in 1738 in nearby Fairfield to an old and wealthy Connecticut family. Vice President Aaron Burr was a first cousin, and an another cousin was married to Tapping Reeve, founder in 1784 of the Litchfield Law School, one of the first law schools in the nation.

He graduated from Yale in 1758 and a year later, moved to Ridgefield where he soon gained prominence, acquiring properties throughout town, including farms. 

King George III made him a justice of the peace in 1770, a job rather more important then than now and equivalent to being a county judge. While he considered himself a loyal subject of the king well into the 1770s, clashes both political and military between England and the colonies led to his becoming a leader of the revolutionaries.

John Jay signed his commission as a colonel in the Continental Army. He eventually took command of the Fifth Connecticut Regiment — whose members included many Ridgefielders. He saw action at the Battles of Germantown, Monmouth, and Stony Point and was among the troops who wintered at Valley Forge. He also fought under General Benedict Arnold at the Battle of Ridgefield — virtually in front of his homestead on Main Street.

During the war he frequently corresponded with General George Washington about official business. “Washington and Bradley were reported to have been friends,” Smithsonian historian Silvio Bedini reported. A family tradition maintained that Washington visited Bradley at his Ridgefield home, located in what is now Ballard Park. “Bradley descendants for many generations preserved a chair, a china bowl and a pitcher, which were said to have been used by Washington during his visit,” Bedini said.

Whether or not they were friends has not been proven, but “it’s is a matter of record that Bradley had the highest esteem for his commander-in-chief, and that Washington valued Bradley’s services in the war,” Bedini adds.

An indication of the respect Washington had for Bradley occurred during the war when Bradley fell ill in the Hudson Palisades of eastern Bergen County, New Jersey. His wife, Ruth Smith Bradley, traveled to his bedside and spent six weeks nursing him back to health. When it was time for her to return to Ridgefield, General Washington assigned three men to escort her on the journey home.

After the war President Washington named Bradley Connecticut’s first marshal,  which at that time made him the top federal law enforcement official in the state. President John Adams renewed the appointment during his administration. When he resigned the post in 1801, Bradley wrote President Thomas Jefferson that “the state of my health is such at present as prevents me from paying the necessary attention to the duties of the office.”

On the home front, Bradley held positions of importance. He was elected a selectman three times in 1767 to 1769, and served as a Ridgefield representative to the colonial Legislature from 1769 to 1776, when he entered the military. He resumed service as a state representative for all but one

year from 1780 until 1791, a critical period when the new “State of Connecticut” was being organized, and when its young government was dealing with heavy war debts.

In 1788, he was one of the delegates to sign Connecticut’s ratification of the U.S. Constitution. 

Another  sign of his local importance was shown in 1786 after it was discovered that Lt. Ebenezer Olmstead, who had also served under him in the Connecticut Fifth, had misappropriated a large amount of state tax money he had collected on behalf of the town. Olmstead was arrested and Bradley headed a committee to auction off the Olmstead’s Main Street homestead. However, when earned only 120 pounds, far less than what was owed to the state,  Col. Bradley was dispatched to Hartford to see if Ridgefield’s state tax debt could be forgiven. The state was insistent, however; the war had been costly and it badly needed money. The town wound up going into debt to pay off the missing taxes; Ridgefield was so poor and desperate that, in 1792, it voted to sell its set of “books containing the laws of ye United States.”

At a boy Samuel G. Goodrich — “Peter Parley” in many of the more than 100 books he produced in the 19th Century —  knew Bradley. The Colonel would be seen in the Congregational Church, where Goodrich’s father was minister, and he would sometimes visit the Goodrich home on High Ridge.

“He was the leading citizen of the place, in station, wealth, education, and power of intellect,” Goodrich recalled in 1856.  “He was a tall, gaunt, sallow man, a little bent at the period of my recollection….

“I perfectly recollect his appearance at church, and the impression he made upon me. He was bald, and wore a black silk cap, drawn down close over his eyes. These were like jet, not twinkling, but steady and intense, appearing very awful from the dark caverns in which they were set. I hardly dared to look at him, and if perchance his slow but searching gaze fell upon me, I started as if something had wounded me.”

Bradley’s gambrel-roofed house, probably somewhat similar in appearance to the Hauley House at Main and Branchville Road, stood in what is now Ballard Park.  

“This was of ample dimensions, and had a grave, antique air, the effect of which was enhanced by a row of wide-arching elms, lining the street. It stood on a slight elevation, and somewhat withdrawn from the road; the fence in front was high and close; the doors and windows were always shut, even in summer. 

“I know not why, but this place had a sort of awfulness about it: It seemed to have a spirit and a voice, which whispered to the passer-by, ‘Go thy way: This is the abode of one above and beyond thee!’ ”

While Bradley had a “cold” and “distant” air about him, Goodrich said, “He was, I believe, an honorable man. He was a member of the church; he was steady in his worship, and never missed the sacrament. He was a man of education, and held high offices.”

Bradley was “the most distinguished citizen of the place, and naturally enough imagined that such a position carried with it, not the shadow, but the substance of power. He seldom took an open part in the affairs of the town, but when he did, he felt that his word should be law. He deemed even a nod of his head to be imperative; people were bound to consult his very looks, and scenting his trail, should follow in his footsteps. 

“Like most proud men of despotic temper, he sometimes condescended to bring about his ends by puppets and wire pullers. Affecting to disdain all meddling, he really contrived openly or covertly to govern the church and the town. 

“When parties in politics arose, he was of course a federalist; though ostentatiously standing aloof from, the tarnish of caucuses, he still managed to fill most of the offices by his seen or unseen dictation.”

He was as conservative as they came. “Such a man,” Goodrich said, “could little appreciate the real spirit of democracy, now rising like a spring-tide over Connecticut. Believing in the ‘Good old way,’ he sincerely felt that innovation was synonymous with ruin. Thinking all virtue and all wisdom to be centered in the few, he believed all folly and mischief to be in the many. The passage of power from the former to the latter, he regarded with unaffected horror. The sanctity of the church, the stability of the law, the sacredness of home, life, and property, all seemed to him put at hazard if committed to the rabble, or what to him was equivalent, that dreaded thing—democracy.”

However, Goodrich observed, gradually “the leaven of democracy affected more and more the general mass. Federalism held itself haughtily aloof from the lower classes, while democracy tendered to them the gratifying signals of fraternity. Federalism really and sincerely distrusted the capacity of the people to govern themselves, except through the guidance and authority of the superior classes; democracy believed, or pretended to believe, in the people, and its works were according to its real or seeming faith.”

Though Goodrich’s descriptions seemed to convey a dislike of Bradley, he in fact appreciated

Bradley’s importance in the early years of the nation when strong leadership was needed. “However old-fashioned it may seem,” he said in the 1850s, “I still look back upon those stiff federalists, sitting in their pews like so many judges in Israel — rigid in their principles, hard, but honest, in their opinions — with a certain degree of respect. 

“Perhaps, too, they were not altogether wrong, though the battle has gone against them. If, at the outset of our government, which was launched at the very period when the French Revolution was agitating the world with its turbulent waves, the suffrage had been universal, probably we should have gone to destruction. Federalism, no doubt, locked the wheels of the car of state, and thus stayed and regulated its progress, till the steep was passed, and we were upon the safe and level plain. Theoretically wrong, according to present ideas, federalism was useful and necessary in its day. It is to be regretted that its spirit of patriotism is not imitated by all modern partisans.”

Bradley died in 1821, three years after Connecticut adopted its new Constitution that favored democratic principles over federalism; it extended the right to vote to virtually all white males, not just landowners, disestablished the Congregational Church as the official state church; strengthened the power of the people in running government, and established 21 protected individual rights for all. 

No longer were the “standing order” — the wealthy, male elites like Colonel Bradley — in control of the government.

Books About Ridgefield  

Here is an alphabetical list of more than two dozen, non-fiction books that have been published about Ridgefield, mostly from a historical point of view. 

Many of these titles are available at the Ridgefield Historical Society, including some out-of-print editions. Books on the Common has most in-print titles. Amazon can supply almost all of them. 

For used or reprint editions, check abe.com or amazon.com. Amazon offers many print-on-demand reprints of books that are considered “out of print.” Many of these titles are also available in electronic versions for Kindle, etc. — some older ones free of charge; try Googling the title. Some, like Rockwell’s history, can be read online.

About Ridgefield: 
What We Were - What We Are

A comprehensive, lavishly illustrated report on many facets of Ridgefield, including architecture, neighborhoods, history, landmarks, natural resources, cultural and religious centers, open spaces, cemeteries, and more; produced in 2002 by the Ridgefield Design Council, soft-cover, extensive index.

Account of the Battle of Ridgefield 
and Tryon’s Raid, An

First detailed history of the 1777 battle, published on the 150th  anniversary; by James R. Case, 56 pages, with map;  privately printed, 1927; later reprints were done.

Barbour Collection: Vol. 36
The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Records, Volume 36 in a statewide series, reproduces the valuable Barbour index to Ridgefield births, marriages and deaths from 1709 to 1850. 167 pages devoted to Ridgefield. A must for any serious Ridgefield researcher. Also includes Redding vitals.  Published in 2000 by Genealogical Publishing Company. 

Brief Historical Notice 
of the Town of Ridgefield, A

Published by the Village Improvement Society in 1906, this 60-page small-form book contains many photographs of the town, its houses, gardens and points of interest, all taken by Joseph Hartmann.  It includes a brief history of the town and of the society. Out of print, but available.

Farmers Against the Crown
Keith Marshall Jones wrote this comprehensive account of the Battle of Ridgefield during the Revolutionary War, revealing much new information and correcting many old mistakes in previous accounts. “This telling will remain the standard account of the battle for a long, long time,” said Christopher Collier, former Connecticut state historian.162 pages, paperback, extensively illustrated. Published 2002. Out of print.

Farms of Farmingville, The
While Keith Marshall Jones calls this book "a two-century history of 23 Ridgefield, Connecticut farmhouses and the people who gave them life," it is really a history of a good part of the town. He has extensively researched a section on Ridgefield that contains a significant cross-section of the community from the 1700s into the 20th Century, and  gives a picture of what life here was like during that period. Published 2001. Hardcover. 509 pages, indexed. Many maps, house plans, photos. Available at Ridgefield Historical Society.

Five Village Walks
Self-guided tours of Ridgefield village history, with more than 50 pictures from the past, by Jack Sanders. 56 pages, indexed, map. Last updated in 2008. $5 price benefits Ridgefield Historical Society.  

Glimpses of Ridgefield

An unnumbered, album-style book of dozens pictures of Ridgefield from the 1890s by a pioneering woman photographer in Connecticut, Marie H. Kendall. Copies rarely appear on the market. Published in 1900.

Hidden History of Ridgefield
A look at Ridgefield’s often unheralded people, places and things,  a sort of sequel to Ridgefield Chronicles, relating little-known pieces of what make Ridgefield a remarkable place in which to live, work, visit—or write history; by Jack Sanders. 160 pages. Dozens of pictures and maps.  Published in 2015 by The History Press.

Historical Sketch of Ridgefield, An

While small of size and only 48 pages, this well-done paperbound book, published around 1920, contains a history of the town and a description of what it was like a century ago, made all the more remarkable by the fact that it was written by Allen Nevins, who went on to win two Pulitzer Prizes for history writing. Published by The Elms Inn.  Out of print. 

History of Ridgefield
George L. Rockwell's 583-page classic has been long out of print, but copies become available. Particularly strong on 19th and early 20th Century history, and containing many early birth, marriage and death records. The book has many photos taken by Joseph Hartmann. Cloth and leather editions were printed. Also, in the 1980s, a reprinted edition was published. Out of print.

History of Ridgefield, Connecticut, The
In 1878, the Rev. Daniel Teller of the First Congregational Church published this 251-page book, the first comprehensive history of the town. While much of the content is covered in later histories, the engravings of various Ridgefield buildings and scenes, all based on very early photographs, are both wonderful and valuable. Not indexed. Published in cloth and leather versions. Out of print.

Images of America: Ridgefield
127 pages of finely reproduced pictures of Ridgefield past, published in 1999. People, houses, businesses, scenes of town life, etc. from 1890s to 1950s, produced by Ridgefield Archives Committee, now the Ridgefield Historical Society. Arcadia Publishing. 

Impact: The Historical Account 
of the Italian Immigrants of Ridgefield, CT:  

Extensive history of Italian community of Ridgefield, with many biographies, photos, and interviews; by Aldo Biagiotti; 345 pages, indexed; privately printed, 1990.

Notable Ridgefielders
An 88-page, tabloid-newspaper-sized collection of brief biographies of more than 400 people who made news in Ridgefield during the 20th Century, published by The Ridgefield Press on its 125th anniversary. Also contains extensive timeline. Illustrated, indexed. Published in 2000. Available from The Ridgefield Press, 16 Bailey Avenue.

Proprietors of Ridgefield, The
Glenna M. Welsh's history tells of the early settlement of the town, with particular focus on those who lived on Main Street. Not indexed. Many illustrations. Published in 1976 in paper and cloth editions, the clothbound version is still available at the Keeler Tavern or from the Ridgefield Historical Society.

Recollections of A Lifetime
This is the two-volume autobiography of Samuel G. Goodrich, who wrote more than 100 books, mostly for young people, under the name of Peter Parley. The first 300 or so pages are devoted to his growing up in Ridgefield in the late 1700s and early 1800s and provide a fascinating and rare look at life in the town two centuries ago. Published in 1856 by Miller, Orton and Mulligan. 1,100+ pages, many illustrations, indexed. Used copies available but often damaged and expensive; available in reprint — some reprint publishers will sell only volume one, containing the Ridgefield information, but no index, which is in volume two (note that an abridged edition was also published in 1800s; this should be avoided by anyone wanting his complete account of Ridgefield). 

Remember the Ladies: 
Notable Women of Ridgefield

Profiles of 14 noteworthy women in Ridgefield’s history; also covers organizations they founded or led; 100 pages, illustrated, published by Ridgefield Historical Society, 2008.

Ridgefield 1900-1950
More than 215 views of what Ridgefield looked like during the first half of the 20th Century. Postcard images of homes, estates, inns, street scenes, stores, churches, and more. Over 20,000 words of accompanying history and lore about the locales pictured, by Jack Sanders. 126 pages, bibliography and index.  Arcadia Publishing, 2003. 

 
Ridgefield at 300
Lavishly illustrated, coffee-table book about the town’s celebration of its 300th birthday in 2008, produced by Ridgefield Magazine.  

Ridgefield Chronicles
Offers glimpses into aspects of Ridgefield’s history including interesting people, the things they accomplished, and the way they lived, as well as the town’s varied geography and place names,  by Jack Sanders. More than 60 pictures. 160 pages.The History Press, 2014.

Ridgefield, Conn. 1708-1908 
Bi-Centennial Celebration

Collection of history, recollections, speeches, and photographs in connection with the town’s 200th birthday celebration. 96 pages, hardbound. Published by the Bi-Centennial Committee, 1908. Out of print.

Ridgefield in Review
Published in 1958, the most modern complete history of the town, with many illustrations, old maps, and military records; written by Smithsonian Institution historian Silvio A. Bedini. 396 pages, indexed. Out of print.

St. Stephen's Church, 
Its History for 250 Years 1725 to 1975
Written by Robert S. Haight, this book tells the story of the church and its place in the community. 220 pages, indexed and illustrated, published 1975. A supplement by Dirk Bollenback, Saint Stephen's Church Reaches the Millennium, 114 pages, indexed and illustrated, covers 1975 to 2000. Sold by the church, 351 Main Street.

We Gather Together… Making the Good News Happen: 1712-2012

This is an extensively illustrated survey history of the First Congregational Church, by its then pastor, the Rev. Charles Hambrick-Stowe. 68 pages. 2011.

Where is Ridgefield Heading?

This 26-page, large format booklet was published in 1950 by the League of Women Voters and suggested possibilities for Ridgefield’s dealing with future growth, including bypasses for the village, and complete reconstruction of commercial blocks in the village.

Wicked Ridgefield
A historical assortment of bad guys and bad times including thievery, bigotry, murders, missing persons, arson, book-banning, and other assorted man-made misery. “This look at the darker side of Ridgefield history points out some heroes, offers some lessons, and provides even a little humor,” says author Jack Sanders in introduction.  160 pages, many pictures, indexed. The History Press, 2016.

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.

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.”

Delight Benedict: 

Teaching the ABCs

Hundreds of teachers in Ridgefield have been remembered in dozens of ways, but few have got quite the strange notoriety of a woman named Delight Benedict — or, as Samuel G. Goodrich called her, “Aunt Delight Benedict.”

Delight Benedict taught at the West Lane Schoolhouse, which is today a historical museum at the intersection of Route 35, West Lane, and South Salem Road (it’s open the last Sunday of the month in warm months). 

Benedict gained a good degree of posthumous fame in the 19th Century when  Goodrich, who wrote more than 100 books under the name of Peter Parley, described her in his 1856 autobiography, "Recollections of A Lifetime":

     “I was about six years old when I first went to school,” Goodrich wrote. “My teacher was Aunt Delight, that is, Delight Benedict, a maiden lady of 50, short and bent, of sallow complexion and solemn aspect.

     “I remember the first day with perfect distinctness. I went alone — for I was familiar with the road, it being that which passed by our old house. I carried a little basket, with bread and butter within, for my dinner, the same being covered over with a white cloth. ...

     “I think we had 17 scholars — boys and girls — mostly of my own age... 

     “The school being organized, we were all seated upon benches, made of what were called slabs — that is, boards having the exterior or rounded part of the log on one side: As they were useless for other purposes, these were converted into school-benches, the rounded part down. They had each four supports, consisting of straddling wooden legs, set into auger-holes. Our own legs swayed in the air, for they were too short to touch the floor. 

     “Oh, what an awe fell over men, when we were all seated and silence reigned around!

“The children were called up, one by one, to Aunt Delight, who sat on a low chair, and required each, as a preliminary, to make his manners, consisting of a small sudden nod or jerk of the head. She then placed the spelling-book — which was Dilworth's — before the pupil, and with a buckhandled penknife pointed, one by one, to the letters of the alphabet, saying, ‘What's that?’

“If the child knew his letters, the ‘what's that?’ very soon ran on thus:

" 'What's that?'

" 'A.'

" ''Stha-a-t?'

" 'B.'

" ''Sna-a-a-t?"

" 'C.'

" ''Sna-a-a-t?'

" 'D.'

" ''Sna-a-a-t?'

" 'E.'" &c.

"I looked upon these operations with intense curiosity and no small respect, until my own turn came. I went up to the school-mistress with some emotion, and when she said, rather spitefully, as I

thought, ‘Make your obeisance!’ my little intellects all fled away, and I did nothing.

“Having waited a second, gazing at me with indignation, she laid her hand on the top of my head, and gave it a jerk which made my teeth clash.

“I believe I bit my tongue a little; at all events, my sense of dignity was offended, and when she pointed to A, and asked what it was, it swam before me dim and hazy, and as big as a full moon. She repeated the question, but I was doggedly silent. Again, a third time, she said, ‘What's that?’ 

“I replied. ‘Why don’t you tell what it is? I didn’t come here to learn you your letters!’”

Goodrich said he himself had no recollection  of his confrontation with his teacher, but he said that “Aunt Delight affirmed it to be a fact.”

That same night Benedict paid a visit to the home of Goodrich’s parents. She “recounted to their astonished ears this, my awful contempt of authority. My father, after hearing the story, got up and went away; but my mother, who was a careful disciplinarian, told me not to do so again! 

“I always had a suspicion that both of them smiled on one side of their faces, even while they seemed to sympathize with the old petticoat and pen-knife pedagogue, on the other; still I do not affirm it; for I am bound to say, of both my parents, that I never knew them, even in trifles, say one thing while they meant another.”

Goodrich’s father was the Rev. S. G. Goodrich, minister of the First Congregational Church, and his mother, Elizabeth Ely Goodrich, was a member of a prominent family in Connecticut.

Delight Benedict was born in Ridgefield in 1759, only a few years after the first West Lane schoolhouse was built. She was one of six children of John and Esther Stebbins Benedict. John

Benedict was a well-educated Ridgefielder, a 1747 graduate of Yale and a deacon of the Congregational Church. (Rev. Goodrich was a fellow Yalie.)  His wife was a member of one of the founding families of the town.

Delight Benedict was one of the very few teachers that Goodrich mentions in his 1,100-page, two-volume “Recollections of A Lifetime,” and he always paints a cold, unflattering picture of the woman. “She, not being a beauty, was never married, and hence, having no children of her own, she combed and crammed the heads of other people’s children,” he writes at one point. “In this way she was eminently useful in her day and generation.”

Delight Benedict’s five siblings all lived longer lives than she did. Even both of her parents survived her when she died in 1812 at the age of 51.

Goodrich was not a fan of the system that provided his earliest education — he may have learned more from his sophisticated parents than he did at West Lane schoolhouse — and he credited much of his best education to reading. What’s more, it was probably to counteract the kind of cold, boring schoolhouse instruction often provided in the 18th and 19th Centuries that prompted him to produce more than 100 books, most of them aimed at children and many of them designed to be textbooks. Instead of dispensing cold, hard facts, the pages of Peter Parley books talked directly to the children in a friendly fashion, and featured many illustrations to arouse their interest and explain their subjects.

Perhaps it was Aunt Delight’s uninspiring ways that helped inspire Goodrich to make learning fun. 

Preston Bassett: 

Inventor and Historian 

Although he was a nationally recognized inventor and aviation pioneer who became a captain of industry, Preston Bassett was better known locally as a historian, an antiques expert, and a benefactor of the Keeler Tavern. 

As an aeronautical engineer and inventor,  Bassett held patents in such varied realms as anti-aircraft searchlights, automatic pilots, and airliner soundproofing,  and counted the Wright brothers, Charles Lindbergh, Eddie Rickenbacker, Wiley Post, and Amelia Earhart among his friends.

Preston Rogers Bassett was born in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1892. His father was an urban planner and his sister, Isabel Bassett Wasson, became one of the first female petroleum geologists in the United States (she was also the first female ranger at Yellowstone National Park, and also one of the first interpretive rangers hired by the National Park Service).

Bassett graduated from Amherst College in 1913 and continued his studies at Brooklyn Polytech.

He joined Sperry Gyroscope in 1914 as a research engineer and remained with the company for 42 years, rising through the ranks to become its president from 1945 until 1956. Sperry, later Sperry Rand, had its headquarters at Lake Success, Long Island, in a huge building that, from 1946 to 1952, also served as temporary headquarters of the United Nations.

Bassett held 35 patents for his aeronautical inventions, including a high-intensity anti-aircraft searchlight— one Bassett searchlight produced 800-million candlepower and could be seen 200 miles away. In 1924 at Mount Wilson Observatory, Bassett assisted Albert A. Michelson in employing an arc light and gyroscope technology to measure the speed of light. 

He directed the development of the first blind-flying instruments and the first automatic pilot for aircraft. In 1929, aviation pioneer Jimmy Doolittle tested the Sperry equipment in the first “blind landing”  — now known as an “instrument landing” — of an airplane.

During World War II he focused his efforts on military applications for his inventions, and was a technology adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

After the war he turned his attention to improving passenger aircraft and engineered the first successful soundproofing system for airplanes. In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower named him to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics which, in 1958, became NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

While living on Long Island, Bassett had been very active in historical efforts, serving as

village historian for the town of Rockville Centre, and vice president of the New York State Historical Society in Cooperstown.

He brought that interest in local history with him when he moved  in 1952  to a house on High Ridge, the boyhood home of 19th Century author Samuel Goodrich, whose pen name was Peter Parley.  An inveterate collector, Bassett amassed more than 100 different Goodrich books, many of

them exceedingly rare, which he eventually gave to the Ridgefield Library.

He was president of the Keeler Tavern Preservation Society from 1968 to 1972, and one of its most important benefactors, donating many artifacts, including pieces of colonial-era furniture. He also provided his expertise to the tavern and to many people in town. Well into his 80s, he would explore dirt cellars and ancient attics to help owners of old houses identify the age of their home’s construction.

Bassett gave away most of his many collections when he was in his 80s, a process he called “uncollecting.” The Smithsonian Institution got his vast collection of more than 800 antique lamps, lanterns and lighting devices, as well as some of his antique bicycles – including the oldest known American bike. Among the other institutions that received his gifts were the Henry Ford Museum, Mead Art Museum, Old Bethpage Village, and the Farmers’ Museum.

Bassett was also a writer, producing many articles on scientific and historical subjects. In 1969, he published a 244-page history of Rockville Centre, Long Island, and in 1981, at the age of 89, “Raindrop Stories,” his book of weather tales for children, was published. 

His autobiography, “The Life and Times of Preston R. Bassett,” appeared in 1976, and offered many stories of his life as an inventor and historian. In one tale, he described a flight he took

in 1936 across the Atlantic in a German airship, debating with the caption about whether the future of transoceanic flying belonged to the dirigible or the airplane. Less than a year later, that same airship, the Hindenburg, was a burned wreck in New Jersey.

He also did a bit of publishing, hand-printing a volume of poetry written by his wife, Jeanne M. Bassett.

He died at his home in April 1992, just a few weeks after his 100th birthday.

Preston Bassett spent his life inventing many improvements in aircraft. He also knew how to have a bit of aeronautical fun. In 1953, he posed as a British aircraft mechanic in order to get aboard a test flight of the prototype of the first jet-powered passenger airliner, a de Havilland DH 106 Comet that was made in England. He thus became the first American ever to fly in a passenger jet. 

In 1971, the last commercial, propeller-driven, trans-Atlantic flight took place; jet airliners had completely replaced prop-planes. “It seems unbelievable to me,” Bassett wrote that year, “that this entire revolution from my test flight to the 100% conversion has all taken place since we moved up here to Ridgefield in 1952.”

William O. Seymour:

Bridges and Oil for the Waters

William O. Seymour was one of Ridgefield’s leading citizens at the turn of the 20th Century, so perhaps the Ridgefield Press obituary writer was a bit flustered by Seymour’s importance when he wrote on the front page Jan. 26, 1911: “He was a man among men, a consistent Christian, a good citizen, one of the few whom our town could afford to lose.” 

A man known for his calm and warm demeanor, Seymour might have smiled at the gaffe.

Born in 1833 in Ridgefield, William Oscar Seymour got his early education in local schoolhouses. He then attended the Amenia (N.Y.) Seminary, a Methodist secondary school that was well respected and produced several university presidents and bishops. 

Seymour returned to Ridgefield to become a grammar school teacher, but seeing the need for a “high school” in town, established the High Ridge Institute in the late 1850s. Seymour’s school, which had both boarding and day students, served up to 40 boys. At the time Seymour lived in the “Peter Parley house” — the childhood home of author Samuel G. Goodrich — on High Ridge, from which he also ran the school.

By 1869, Seymour was looking at an entirely new career:  civil engineering, a subject he had previously taught to young men. Railroads were expanding at a rapid rate. Before 1871, about 45,000 miles of track had been laid in the United States. Between 1871 and 1900, another 170,000 miles were added. Seymour saw an opportunity not only for profitable work but perhaps also for adventure. 

In 1873, he began working for the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, which at the

time was the largest road in New England. He started out as a “rodman” — a menial job involving carrying and holding a rod used during the process of surveying for a new line. By 1877, he was the railroad’s chief engineer.

He left in 1881 to join a Massachusetts railroad, but soon decided to head west. He spent nearly five years designing and building railroads for the Wisconsin Central in Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. His projects included building a 104-mile line from Chippewa Falls, Wisc., to St. Paul, Minn, crossing the St. Croix River with a 2,239-foot long iron bridge on stone abutments (years later the bridge was later abandoned but the abutments still stand in the river). Another line he built ran 124 miles from Chicago, Ill., to Schleisingerville, Wisc.

In 1887, Seymour returned to his home town where Gov. Phineas Lounsbury, a fellow Ridgefielder, appointed him one of the state’s three railroad commissioners — a post of considerable importance in that era when the state was served by more than two dozen railroads and streetcar companies. He remained a commissioner until his death 24 years later.

He was also a leading citizen in local government, serving as a probate judge, a state representative, a borough warden, and a member of the Board of Estimate (predecessor to the Board of Finance),  He was vice-president of the First National Bank of Ridgefield, which he helped found in 1900. 

In 1908, Seymour was chairman of the town’s Bicentennial celebration, which included a parade, speeches, other special events, and the publication of a book that offered many pictures of

people and places of Ridgefield along with essays about the town. Fifty years later, Seymour’s great-grandson, Ridgefield Press publisher Karl Seymour Nash, was chairman of the town’s 250th anniversary celebration.

When he had returned to Ridgefield, Seymour built a sizable house on Parley Lane, just down the hill a few hundred feet from the Peter Parley house he had earlier owned.  The house is still standing, though it underwent a major rebuilding and expansion in the 1990s.

William O. Seymour was 77 years old when he died. Writing the next week from Montreal, where he was a consular official, historian George L. Rockwell said in a tribute to Seymour : “The welfare of the town was always uppermost with him. Office sought him and not he the office. In public meetings, when debate at times waxed to the point of bitterness, with a few chosen words would he pour oil upon the troubled waters.”

Sarah Bishop: 

The Hermitess on the Mountain

Ridgefield has had not only a hermit, but also a hermitess—though, officially, she was a New Yorker. Sarah Bishop lived in a tiny cave in the side of West Mountain in Lewisboro, N.Y., just across the Ridgefield line westward of Oreneca Road and Sturges Park. 

She arrived during the Revolutionary War, but no one knows why. Several legends explain her appearance. One said she was in love with a sea captain who deserted her. Another maintained that shortly before her wedding day, British troops invaded her Long Island home and a Redcoat raped her. Full of shame or sorrow, she ran away to this cave from which, on a clear day, she could see Long Island and the place where she spent her girlhood days.

Sarah Bishop lived on gifts of food, on wild plants, and on a small garden she kept near her cave, which was little more than a hollow in some rocks. 

A reporter who visited her in 1804 said a few peach trees, as well as beans, cucumbers and potatoes grew in a nearby clearing. There were also said to be many grape vines nearby. 

She also got some necessities from kind-hearted people on West Mountain and in Ridgefield and South Salem, whose villages she periodically visited.

A religious woman, Sarah Bishop sometimes attended services at the First Congregational Church here or the Presbyterian Church in South Salem. At the home of Jared Hoyt in South Salem, she kept some fancy dresses from her youth. She would come down from the mountain, dress at his house, attend church, and return to the house to change back into her “rags.”

One of the places she visited in Ridgefield village was the home of the Rev. Samuel G. Goodrich, minister of the First Congregational Church. The house still stands on High Ridge at the head of Parley Lane. His son, author S. G. Goodrich (whose pen name was Peter Parley), remembered as a boy seeing her. “This strange woman was no mere amateur recluse. The rock—bare and desolate—was actually her home, except that occasionally she strayed to the neighboring

villages, seldom being absent more than one or two days at a time. She never begged, but received such articles as were given to her.

“She was of a highly religious turn of mind, and at long intervals came to our church and partook of the sacrament. She sometimes visited our family—the only one thus favored in town—and occasionally remained over night. She never would eat with us at the table, nor engage in general conversation.

“Upon her early history she was invariably silent; indeed, she spoke of her affairs with great reluctance. She neither seemed to have sympathy for others, nor ask it in return. If there was any exception, it was only in respect to the religious exercises of the family; she listened intently to the reading of the Bible and joined with apparent devotion in the morning and evening prayer.”

Goodrich added, “I have very often seen this eccentric personage stealing into church, or moving along the street, or wending her way through land and footpath up to her mountain home. She always appeared desirous of escaping notice, and though her step was active, she had a gliding movement, which seemed to ally her to the spirit world.”

Sarah Bishop died in 1810. According to George L. Rockwell, “the generally accepted story is that one stormy night, she left the house of one of the neighbors, who lived on the corner of the road leading up to the mountain. Wending her way up the steep mountainside to her cave, she fell, and too weak to continue her way, perished from the cold. She was found among the rocks a short distance from her cave.” She was buried in an unmarked grave in North Salem.

In 1908, Dr. Maurice Enright, a physician who maintained a summer place here, wrote a novel, “The Ridgefield Tavern, A Romance of Sarah Bishop, Hermitess, During the American Revolution.” The book cast Sarah Bishop as the daughter of the operator of the Keeler Tavern (“Ridgefield Tavern”), a photograph of which appears in the book. The account is, of course, fictional.

Goodrich turned to poetry to capture the color of the old hermitess, publishing the following in 1823 under his pen name of Peter Parley, in a Hartford newspaper. It’s a great piece to read aloud on Halloween night.

For many a year the mountain hag

Was a theme of village wonder,

For she made her home on the dizzy crag

where the eagle bore its plunder.

Up the beetling cliff she was seen at night

Like a ghost to glide away;

But she came again with the morning light

From the forest wild and gray.

Her face was wrinkled, and passionless seem’d,

As her bosom—all blasted and dead —

And her colorless eye like an icicle gleam’d,

Yet no sorrow or sympathy shed.

Her long snowy locks, as the winter drift,

On the wind were backward cast;

And her shrivel’d form glided by so swift,

You had said ‘Twere a ghost that pass’d.

Her house was a cave in a giddy rock

That o’erhung a lonesome vale;

And ‘twas deeply scarr’d by the lightning’s shock

And swept by vengeful gale.

As alone on the cliff she musingly sate —

The fox at her fingers would snap;

The crow would sit on her snow-white pate,

And the rattlesnake coil in her lap.

The night-hawk look’d down with a welcome eye

As he stoop’d in his airy swing;

And the haughty eagle hover’d so nigh

As to fan her long locks with his wing.

But when winter roll’d dark his sullen wave

From the west with gusty shock,

Old Sarah, deserted, crept cold to her cave

And slept without bed in her rock.

No fire illumined her dismal den,

Yet a tatter’d Bible she read;

For she saw in the dark with a wizard ken,

And talk’d with the troubled dead.

And often she mutter’d a foreign name,

With curses too fearful to tell,

And a tale of horror—of madness and shame —

She told to the walls of her cell! 

H. Dunscombe Colt: 

Archaeologist of the Desert

The historic Peter Parley house on High Ridge was home to not only its namesake author and his minister father, but another man who shared with them an interest in history, literature and religion.

H. Dunscombe Colt was an internationally known archaeologist and an expert on Rudyard Kipling. Together with his father he lived in the 1920s, 30s and 40s where S.G. Goodrich (Peter Parley), son of the third minister of the First Congregational Church, grew up. 

Harris Dunscombe Colt II was born in 1901 in New York City, son of Harris Dunscomb and Elizabeth Bowne Colt. (Unlike his father, he ended his middle name with an E.) 

His dad, a Yale-educated lawyer, and his mother,  great-granddaughter of a New York City mayor, came here in the late 1910s and for a while, owned the Bluebird Apartments, located across the street from the West Lane Inn (though they never lived there).

The Peter Parley property was much bigger when they bought it and around 1920, the Colts sold a triangular piece at High Ridge and Shadow Lane to the Hyde sisters from New Jersey, who then built the English-style cottages and cobblestone courtyard, surrounded by high stone walls, that are a landmark at the south end of High Ridge today.

The Colts sent their son to England for his schooling. He studied at St. Paul’s and Oxford University, which he did not complete but at which he became interested in archaeology, the focus of his future career. 

His first dig was in 1922, excavating an ancient Roman site in Kent, England, with a team from London’s Society of Antiquaries. He then worked in Egypt under the noted British Egyptologist, W. M. Flinders Petrie, and took part in excavations on Malta. 

 From 1929 through 1935, he directed digs at Auja el Hafir and other locations in the Negev desert. According to a three-volume report on his archaeological excavations in Palestine published years later by Princeton University Press, the expedition “uncovered the remains of an ancient village in the Negeb. Among the ruins was found a hoard of Greek papyrus documents  dating from A.D. 500 to A.D. 700, which are a welcome addition to the mere handful of such documents found outside of Egypt and are the first to come out of Palestine.”

The excavation found that “the little Palestinian town went in heavily for religious literature but, what is more surprising, that at least some of the people in this Greek-speaking community had copies of Virgil and glossaries to help them read him. Among the finds is a Latin-Greek glossary of the Aeneid, to be dated in the 6th Century, which is by far more extensive than any similar Latin-Greek glossary thus far published.”

Also found were fragments of the Gospel of John. “These show that even at a late date in a comparatively obscure place, an astonishingly pure text of the New Testament was in common use.”

Colt ended his field work around 1940,  “I think a contributory factor may have been a realization that his personality prevented him from having some of the toughness which directing excavations needs,” wrote Crystal-Marie Bennett, a pioneering woman archaeologist and friend of Colt. Bennett said Colt later admitted to her “that the rigours of field archaeology were not for him and that he had preferred to use his talents in other ways to help archaeology.”

To that end he established the Colt Archaeological Institute, which financed archaeological digs but especially focused on publication of archaeological findings.  “To be published by Colt was a sought after honour among archaeologists,” Bennett wrote in a 1974 tribute to her friend.

Colt also inherited a love of collecting from his father, who had assembled an extensive series of engraved, historical views of New York City. For years he worked on updating an encyclopedia of American engravers. The work was done in cooperation with the American Antiquarian Society, of which he was a longtime member.

For much of his life, Colt would spend the warmer half of the year in London and the colder six months in the United States. Here he would usually focus on researching engravers while in London, it would be archaeology and Kipling. Besides Ridgefield, he had homes in New York and Washington.

“Colt may have been shy and diffident, almost retiring, but he was completely cosmopolitan, equally at home on both sides of the Atlantic, with a truly global approach to life and a breadth of vision which brooked no limitations, particularly in archaeology,” Crystal-Marie Bennett wrote.

His first wife, Theresa Strickland Colt, died in 1955. In 1957 he married Armida Maria-Theresa

Bologna Walsh, a native of Trieste, who later donated thousands of items in her husband’s archaeological, engraving and Kipling collections to museums and libraries in the U.S. and Europe. Many ancient pieces were given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In 1984 and 1987, she donated 2,500 Kipling items to the Library of Congress which established the H. Dunscombe Colt Kipling Collection.  It includes Kipling first editions, periodicals, books about Kipling, books Kipling owned,  photographs of Kipling and his family, and drawings, manuscripts, letters, and clippings.

Colt died in 1973 in London at the age of 72 and is buried in an old country churchyard in Sussex, overlooking the South Downs in England. 

Armida died in Washington, D.C., in 2011 at the age of 99. According to her obituary, she “loved entertaining both in Georgetown and in London, where she lived part of the year.”