Judge George Scott: 

A Good Paperhanger

George Scott was the ultimate home-town boy. Descended from the earliest settlers of Ridgefield and a son of perhaps the most influential community leader of the 19th Century, Scott lived a civic-minded life, running several local businesses and holding several major town offices for many years. 

But after World War II broke out, he did something rather unusual: He volunteered to serve — at the age of 71.

George Gorham Scott was born in Ridgefield in 1871, a son of Col. and Mrs. Hiram Keeler Scott. His influential father was a major leader of the community. A Main Street merchant, Col. Scott founded in the 1850s what is today’s Bissell Pharmacy — the oldest locally owned business in town today. As a boy George worked for his dad at the store. 

As a young man George Scott sought adventure and headed west. He established a painting and decorating business in San Francisco for a few years and, in 1893, joined in the gold rush at Cripple Creek, Colo. But soon he headed back home to Ridgefield, where he continued his painting and decorating business. However, the arrival of that new fangled machine, the automobile, prompted him to go into the car business. He had a dealership on Main Street where, until recently, Cheers and, previously, Liberta’s liquor store was. He also had an insurance business.

Community service was in his blood. He was a longtime member of the Board of Education, was town assessor, a registrar of voters and a member of building committees that expanded the East Ridge School (“old high school”) in 1925 and in 1939.

In 1924, he was elected Ridgefield’s town clerk, a post that his father had held for 46 years. Son George lasted 44 years, retiring in 1948.

Also in 1924 he was elected judge of probate, another job his dad had held, and he remained in that office until the mandatory retirement age of 70, reached in 1942.

“In all of his activities, Judge Scott has been impelled by high ideals and a keen sense of duty and honor,” The Ridgefield Press said in a 1932 profile of him. “Ridgefield has every right to be proud of such a valuable citizen.”

Perhaps it should be of no surprise then that, in 1942, the year he retired as probate judge, Scott wrote a rather remarkable letter to the War Department in Washington, D.C.

“I am 71 years of age, but I feel like 30 and want to do anything that I can to help in this war effort,” Scott wrote.

“I have been Judge of Probate in Ridgefield, Connecticut for the past 40 years and am now Town Clerk of the Town of Ridgefield, Connecticut, but I feel that almost anyone can take my places as such and I want to do anything that I can to crush that damned paperhanger in Berlin.

“Speaking of paper hangers, I was once one myself, the only difference is that I was a good one.

“I don’t think that I would fit in the front line trenches, but I do feel that I could be of use in some other capacity.

“At present I make about $7,000 a year, but I would be more than glad to make $21 a month from Uncle Sam.”

The War Department turned down his offer. Presumably, they did so politely and with a great appreciation.

George Scott died in 1957 at the age of 85. 

Scott may have had the look of a prim and proper bureaucrat, but he was hardly stodgy. Each day in the 1930s he would walk to the office, accompanied by his dog, Tippy, a poodle mix.

Scott had a special platform affixed to the sill of a front window in the town clerk’s office, allowing Tippy to rest and watch the passing scene outside. When people walked into the town hall, Tippy would invariably jump down and greet them, giving any offered hand a friendly lick.

Joseph H. Donnelly: 

The First Lawyer

Joe Donnelly made quite a name for himself in Ridgefield. In fact, he made several names for himself.

Ridgefield’s first full-time practicing attorney and one of its most astute real estate entrepreneurs had a career that lasted more than 60 years and included countless hours of public service, both with Ridgefield government and in numerous community organizations.

“He was really good to an awful lot of people, and helped an awful lot of people — behind the scenes,” said Paul S. McNamara, who had been his partner for many years. “He was reserved and preferred to remain anonymous.”

Even so, his name does appear on three town roads.

Joseph Henry Donnelly was born in 1906 in Bridgeport, got his bachelor’s and law degrees

from Columbia University, and went to work for his brother’s  prestigious law firm in Bridgeport.

In July 1931, when he was only 24 years old, he decided to strike out on his own and arrived in Ridgefield in “an old Pontiac,” recalled former town historian Richard E. Venus. He lived at Ashland Cottage, the Victorian house just south of the St. Stephen’s campus where once another attorney had lived. While Samuel “Lawyer Sam” Keeler was a full-time attorney, he had practiced only in New York City; the newcomer, the town’s only local lawyer, was the first to live and practice full-time in Ridgefield.

After his marriage to Ellen Gavin, whom he had met at Columbia, Donnelly moved to a house on West Mountain Road. Later he bought a farm on Wilton Road West, part of which he eventually developed into a subdivision served by Donnelly Drive — one of three roads in town using his name.

Soon after his arrival Judge Donnelly became active in his new community. He was named the town attorney in 1935, serving until 1948 and again for a year in the late 1960s.

From 1941 to 1949 he was judge of probate, an elective office that was the source of the judicial title that stuck over the years — many people referred to him as “Judge Donnelly” long after he stopped being a probate judge.

For many years, he was involved in the drive to bring zoning to Ridgefield and was in the forefront of the campaign that led to zoning’s adoption in 1946. The ordinance he championed was written by his brother, John V. Donnelly, who was city attorney of Bridgeport and whose law firm broke in many of the state’s top trial lawyers, not to mention his own brother.

Joe Donnelly served in many other government posts including on a charter revision commission and the Police Commission. He was Ridgefield’s state representative from 1939 to 1941, and a prosecutor in the town’s Trial Justice Court in the 1940s. He was active in the Republican party, serving for a while as town chairman. He was a frequent moderator of town meetings.

Real estate was one of Donnelly’s long-standing interests and over the years he amassed a lot

of property. Though he had sold off some by the time of his death, he was still one of the town’s top 10 taxpayers — most of the other nine were corporations.

Among his earliest purchases was the commercial block belonging to Judge George G. Scott, whom he succeeded as probate judge. The block, which he acquired in 1943, consists of stores and offices between the Masonic Hall and the old Bissell building, which today includes Craig’s Jewelers, Shine Hair Salon and Rodier Flowers. He bought the land behind this in the mid-1950s and built the “Donnelly Shopping Center” that now houses the Ridgefield Thrift Shop, Ancona’s Wines and Liquors, Ridgefield Music, Colby’s, and other shops but had originally been home to Woolworth’s and First National.

He was involved in the development of Ridgefield Commerce Park on Danbury Road, and several subdivisions. Among these were the 1950s Scodon development in Ridgebury that includes Scodon Drive (he was the “don” while Ridgefield Savings Bank president Carlton Scofield was the “sco”).

With jeweler Francis D. Martin and real estate and insurance broker Arthur J. Carnall, he developed the road that’s named from the first three letters of the threesome’s surnames: Marcardon Avenue. Martin, also a large investor in real estate, was once Donnelly’s landlord — the judge’s first office was over today’s Planet Pizza in the Tudoresque building then owned by Martin.

Later, Judge Donnelly acquired Gov.  Phineas Lounsbury’s one-time home on Governor Street and converted it to offices, which included his own firm of Donnelly, McNamara and Gustafson (now practicing from the Ridgefield Bank building on Danbury Road).

Through his involvement in real estate, both in representing clients and in his own dealings,

he became perhaps the foremost authority on property in town, and some said his records were better than town hall’s. He maintained thousands of property records, first on three-by-five cards and later on microfilm. As historian Dick Venus observed, “he could search a title without leaving his office.”

“He was one of the best real estate lawyers,” said attorney John E. Dowling, who’d also been a probate judge. “He could tell you the deal on a closing many years after. Joe was a detail man.”

Donnelly’s business interests included the Cadillac dealership on Danbury Road, which he and Irving B. Conklin Sr. operated in the early 1950s; it later became Kellogg-Thiess. He had also served on the boards of directors of several banks. 

“He spent an awful lot of time on local organizations, helping the town,” said McNamara. Among the many civic groups for which he volunteered were the Salvation Army, the District Nursing Association, the Ridgefield and Fairlawn Cemetery Associations, and the Knights of Columbus. He was an honorary life member of the Ridgefield Volunteer Fire Department. During World War II he was on the Ration Board and the Selective Service Committee.

He belonged to St. Mary’s Parish, but was ecumenical in his assistance.  “He helped a lot of churches of all denominations,” said Dowling. “He did a lot of work for them and I don’t think he ever charged them for it.”

An avid golfer, Donnelly was a charter member of the Silver Spring Country Club.

“We used to play golf together,” Dowling recalled. “It used to be the lawyers against the bankers. Joe and I would play Scofield and (Frank) Warner.” Other Ridgefield businessmen who’d often be among his golfing partners or competitors included Abe Morelli, Reed F. Shields, Arthur Carnall, Fred Orrico, and Charles Coles.

In 1980 Donnelly was honored on his 50-year membership in the Connecticut Bar. He died in 1992 at the age of 85.

One of Joe Donnelly’s favorite legal cases  — and one he enjoyed recollecting — was his service as administrator of the estate of an 85-year-old Bethel woman named Helen Dow Peck. In 1955, Mrs. Peck bequeathed $180,000 ($1.7 million in 2018) to someone named John Gale Forbes, whom she’d “met” many years earlier via a Ouija board she had purchased at a toy store in 1919.

The bizarre case drew widespread publicity, especially after nine nieces and nephews appealed the bequest on the grounds that Mrs. Peck “did not have the right use of her reason when she executed her will,” giving a small fortune to a “spirit” she’d never seen in person.

The appeal went all the way to the state Supreme Court of Errors, and the relatives, represented by Dowling, won. 

The case “was on the Connecticut Bar exam at least once,” Dowling said with a smile.

D. Smith Sholes: 

A Man of Many Shirts

Catoonah Street today is a microcosm of Ridgefield, with everything from stores and offices to condos and large, single-family homes, not to mention a church, a post office, a cleaners, a restaurant, and a firehouse. But it once also had a shirt factory.

Yes, Ridgefield in the 19th Century was a center, albeit small, of the shirt-making industry, thanks to a man named D. Smith Sholes and his partner, Edward H. Smith, both leading citizens of the town.

David Smith Sholes was born in Ridgefield in 1830, son of a shoemaker who’d moved here from Vermont. He attended local schools including a private school taught by the Rev. David H. Short on Main Street, where Sholes acquired a love of reading. He later helped found a circulating library in Ridgefield that grew into today’s Ridgefield Library, of which he was once treasurer.

When he was 15, he became a clerk at Henry Smith’s store on Main Street but after a few years went to Bridgeport to learn bookkeeping. 

He returned to Ridgefield and, in partnership with Smith, operated the Ridgefield Shirt Factory, which had been founded in the 1840s by George Hunt. The factory was at first located in the Big Shop, a large building that stood where the First Congregational Church is now. (Moved around 1888 to the center of town, the Big Shop is now the home of Terra Sole and Luc’s restaurants, and other businesses off the Bailey Avenue parking lot.) The shirt factory later moved across the street to a building on what’s now an empty lot, and then to Catoonah Street on the site of the current Ridgefield Fire Department headquarters. 

“Colored shirts were a specialty of the factory, which employed as many as sixty persons at one time,” said historian Silvio Bedini. “The chief market was New York City.”

However, it appears many more Ridgefield Shirt “employees,”  mostly women but including a few men, worked from their homes. Sholes and Smith would provide them with packages of  shirt “components” and the women would sew them together in their spare time. The final product was prepared for sale and packaged at the factory. The New York Times reported in 1860 that there were 1,100 home-working women in the area, sewing for Ridgefield Shirt.

Sholes continued in the shirt-making business until around 1893 when, probably faced with competition from large-scale, mechanized clothing operations in New York City, the factory was closed.

In 1886 Sholes was elected treasurer of the Ridgefield Savings Bank, now Fairfield County Bank; he had been one of its incorporators when it was founded back in 1871. He eventually became the bank’s president.

“It was in the discharge of the duties of this important position that he achieved the most marked success of his life,” said The Ridgefield Press in Sholes’s 1907 obituary. “It was under his administration that the institution has grown from a small beginning to be the depository of nearly a million dollars of the savings of our frugal people, and its affairs have been so wisely managed by him that no person has ever yet lost a dollar by his imprudence or mismanagement.”

This profuse praise appeared in a newspaper whose company president was  D. Smith Sholes.

Possible pro-Sholes press prejudice aside, the man was clearly a respected and popular personality in town. An active Democrat, he was appointed Ridgefield’s postmaster in 1886 by President Grover Cleveland, also a Democrat. When Cleveland left office, so did Sholes, but when Cleveland returned for a second term, so did Sholes.

He was a town assessor, a registrar of voters for 17 years, the probate judge in 1870, a member of the Democratic State Central Committee for two terms,  treasurer of the Ridgefield Water Supply Company, and a clerk of St. Stephen’s Church for a quarter of a century. He also helped found the First National Bank of Ridgefield in 1900 and was its first cashier.

Seven years after he died in 1907, he was remembered on Old Home Day, July 4, 1914, when he was saluted as one of Ridgefield’s “sturdy citizens, whose place it seems impossible to fill …Many can testify to his kindness in hours of trouble.”

John Edward Dowling: 

A Jewel of A Jurist

Eddie Dowling was one of Ridgefield’s most intelligent, colorful and well-liked attorneys. He was also a war hero.

“He’s the sweetest guy around,” said Superior Court Judge Patricia Geen at a 1985 dinner in his honor. He’s a “classic Irishman, a rare jewel,” added Judge Howard J. Moraghan.

Famed for his sharp, wry wit, Dowling often regaled people with tales from his long career. Some described his FBI days, such as the time, in a Midwestern cornfield, he had his gun drawn as he stalked a criminal who turned out to be a scarecrow. Some told of unusual legal cases, such as the Bethel woman who left her sizable estate to a name she discovered using a Ouija board. And many were about life in Ridgefield, such as the time a prominent clergyman, who had been complaining for weeks about a pothole at a local gas station, grabbed a pole and went “fishing” in it to emphasize his point.

While Dowling loved to talk, he usually said little when it came to the two Purple Hearts he earned in World War II.

John Edward Dowling was born in 1922 in a High Ridge house behind St. Mary's Church, where his father was the sexton for many years.

As a boy, he earned money for the family delivering newspapers. One of his customers was Judge Joseph H. Donnelly, then the only lawyer practicing in town. At a dinner honoring Dowling many years later, Donnelly observed that then-heavier Dowling had been a “skinny” kid back then. Dowling replied: “Donnelly didn’t tip too much either.”

Dowling graduated in 1939 from Ridgefield High School where the six-foot-four inch student played basketball. He was an usher at the old Ridgefield Playhouse movie theater, clerked at a store, and drove a school bus to earn money while attending Danbury State Teachers College.

In 1942, he joined the U.S. Army and fought with the infantry in the invasion of Europe. Around Christmas 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, he rescued two injured comrades. 

Usually quiet about his war years, Dowling would say little about the event, describing it tersely: “We were under attack and these fellows got wounded and I went out and got them out, back to a medic. It was under fire, but I got away with it.”

Private Dowling was wounded twice in the war, the more serious injury occurring in April 1945 during the invasion of Germany. “The war was rapidly ending,” he said in a 2002 interview. “We were liberating towns. They were happy to see us and not the Russians.”

He was a member of an infantry anti-tank unit that set up a 57-mm gun on a road near the town of Unter-Gruppenbach. An approaching German tank blew up the gun. Dowling and two other men were hit, and a fourth man was killed. Injured seriously enough to have been later given the Last Rites, Dowling nonetheless dragged the two injured comrades to a ditch alongside the road. All three hid there wounded as the German tank drove by (it was knocked out down the road). Dowling was sent to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C., to recover, and was discharged from the Army in July.

Though he earned the Soldiers Medal, two Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, and other commendations, Dowling rarely talked of his war exploits and did not even receive his medals until 40 years after the war — and then, only because his son, Michael, researched and requested them from the Army.

One time when he was asked about his war record, he replied, “You want a war record? Go see Dom Bedini. He jumped at D-Day.”

As for himself, “I was in the service — period.”

Nonetheless, late in life, when efforts were being made by the Ridgefield Historical Society to record the experiences of Ridgefield soldiers in World War II, Dowling allowed Press editor Macklin Reid to interview him on his service. He spoke little of the battle exploits, however, and much of the lighter incidents in the war.

"We never did hit a tank," he admitted with a gleam in his eye. "My first shot with the anti-tank gun, I missed the tank and hit a house and it went through the basement. And you know what came out? Four hundred chickens! So after that, everyone in my unit would say, 'Hit another house!' They liked dead chicken meat.”

After his discharge, Dowling earned a law degree from Fordham University, and spent three years as an FBI agent in Illinois and Texas. 

He returned to town in 1951 and accomplished the then-incredible: As a Democrat he was elected judge of probate in this largely Republican town, defeating a well-known Republican attorney, Michael Bruno. The last Democrat to hold that office had been in 1879, and none has held it since.

“The response of townspeople to his candidacy must warm this young man’s heart and give him renewed inspiration to pursue his career with vigor and enthusiasm,” a Press editorial commented at the time. “During his school years here, Eddie Dowling worked hard. He clerked in a grocery store to earn money to continue his education in teachers college and later law school. Here is a local boy who has made good, a youth who, by diligent application to a program of study and work, has demonstrated that Ridgefield boys and girls need not necessarily go far afield to make their way in life.” (The editorial was written by Karl S. Nash, a native son who went off to Harvard and returned to town to run its newspaper.)

Judge Dowling continued to practice law here for most of the next half-century. Many young attorneys began their careers working in his office, including Joseph Egan, the current (2016) probate judge, Romeo Petroni and Sue Reynolds, both of whom later became Superior Court judges, George M. Cohan, and Jane Belote.

At his funeral Judge Egan called Dowling “one of the best known and beloved people in Ridgefield.” Describing him as a “townie in the true sense of the word,” he said “Ed was great to and for the town of Ridgefield.”

“His life had its ups and downs,” he added. “He handled them all with class and dignity.”
Jane Belote said, "More than any other attorney I have ever known, John Dowling truly loved the law and enjoyed being a lawyer. As a summer intern in his office I discovered that, despite the roguish sense of humor and abundant Irish charm, he brought to his practice not only a keen analytic mind but also understanding, concern and tolerance for his often colorful clients.
“Unusual things happened regularly in John Edward's life,” Attorney Belote added. “Every day was an opportunity for adventure.”

Pam Allen, who had been his legal secretary on and off for more than 30 years, said “he was a great boss. He was a legend. There won’t be another like him, ever.” 

Many remembered him also as a caring man, who often used his legal skills to assist people in need. “He’s helped Ridgefield a lot,” The Press once said in an editorial. “He’s one of the nicest guys in town, and if somebody needs a lawyer and can’t afford to pay, he’s the one most apt to help.”

Dowling also served the community as a member of the Board of Finance in the 1960s and the Veterans Park School Building Committee in the 1950s. He was appointed town attorney, both in the 1950s and in the late 1960s, and was frequently a moderator of town meetings. He was a member of the Ridgefield Housing Authority for several years while living at Ballard Green. From 1959 to 1961, he was chief prosecutor in the Danbury Circuit Court, now the Superior Court, and was for a while president of the Danbury Bar Association. He was one of the founders and a director of the Village Bank and Trust Company.

He was a longtime member of the Ridgefield Volunteer Fire Department, and had served as a trustee for many years. At one point, he acquired an antique Seagraves fire engine, which he outfitted with church pews and used to haul fans to football games at Immaculate High School in Danbury. He later gave the truck to the Volunteer Fire Department, which used it for parts in restoring and maintaining its 1931 Seagraves, which is used in parades.

He had been active at St. Mary’s Church where, in 1962, he chaired the committee that helped persuade voters to provide school bus transportation to St. Mary’s School in the days before state law required public busing of private school children.

In 2002, the Ridgefield Old Timers honored him at its annual awards banquet. In 2001, he was a grand marshal of the Memorial Day Parade.

He enjoyed golf, and played frequently with other leaders of the business and professional community. He was a member of the Silver Spring Country Club for many years.

Dowling’s wife, the former Regina Marie Malkiewicz, died in 1972. The couple met when he was an FBI agent in Chicago and they had eight children. Eddie Dowling died in 2004 at the age of 82.

When he was in his 70s, Judge Dowling lived at Ballard Green, the senior citizen complex that he called “Geritol Gardens” and where he was still practicing law. One of the few single men living there, he used to quip, “I never lock my door because there are 50 women watching it at all times.” 

Col. Hiram K. Scott: 

A Most Useful Man

If anyone could be called Ridgefield’s “most prominent citizen” in the 19th Century, it’s Col. Hiram K. Scott, a man who was a leader in the government, civic, religious, educational, business, judicial, social, and even military life of the town. 

Scott was a town clerk, probate judge, postmaster, state representation, militia officer,   trial justice, and a lot more. He started the first circulating library in town and founded, more than a century and a half ago, the store that is today Bissell’s Pharmacy.

And if that’s not enough, he provided Ridgefield with its first soda fountain.

Hiram Keeler Scott was born in 1822 in a house still standing at the corner of North Salem Road and Circle Drive (it later became the town farm or “poorhouse”). He was a direct descendant of James Scott, who came to Ridgefield in 1712 and whose family settled what was soon called the Scotland district because of the large number of Scotts there.

He attended local schools and, at the age of 19, became a teacher himself, probably at the Scotland or Titicus schoolhouse. In a few years he was teaching at the Center School where “many of Ridgefield’s prominent sons and daughters received their first instruction under him,” The Ridgefield Press reported.

By 1844, when he was only 22, he assumed the first of many public service posts, becoming a town constable, which was then an unpaid, part-time,  elective position. He also served as a town tax collector.

His brains, hard work and ambition soon got him appointed the Ridgefield village

postmaster, a job he held for 28 years from 1849 until 1886 — with some breaks in between as different political parties took charge in Washington. In 1850, he was chosen a state representative — the second youngest man in the Legislature at the time. 

Two years later, he was elected Ridgefield’s town clerk, a job back then considered by many as more important than first selectman — town clerks were paid, first selectmen weren’t. He held the position for 45 years, longer than any town clerk before or since. (Scott’s birth in 1822 had been placed in the record books by Samuel Stebbins, the second longest-serving town clerk at 35 years.)

Scott sometimes seemed defensive, even a tad grumpy, about the town clerk’s job. “The duties of the town clerk, although looked upon by most people as very light and of little importance, are in fact very onerous and exacting,” the 86-year-old told a large audience  at Ridgefield’s bicentennial celebration in 1908. “For the past 20 years there has been a deluge of genealogical searchers trying to find out whether their ancestors had a coat of arms or not. The town clerk must wait upon them and render such assistance as they demand, and hardly a week passes but his time is taken up for many hours, without any remuneration.”

Despite his apparent distaste for genealogists, Scott did get paid a small salary and he did sometimes charge for services. In March 1905, for instance, an out-of-town law firm wrote and asked for some detailed information on the Pulling family that had lived in town in the 1700s and 1800s. Scott wrote back that the lawyers were asking for a lot of work. “If I make a thorough search, and give you a transcript of what your letter indicates, it will be worth $10 ($270 today).”

In 1854, Scott was also elected judge of probate, a post he held for 33 years — he was forced to retire when he reached the state-mandated age limit of 65.

In 1853 (some accounts say 1857), Scott opened a general store on the east side of Main Street, where The Village Tavern and Interiors and Designs by Ursula are today. There he sold food, hardware, dry goods, medicines, and other items, and incorporated the village post office into the operation. In a wing alongside his building, he maintained the town clerk and probate court offices — there was no “town hall” back then.  In the 1880s, the Ridgefield Savings Bank — now the regional giant, Fairfield County Bank — had its sole office in his store. Scott lived in a house behind the store.

Over the years the pharmaceutical side of his business apparently grew to the point where, by the 1890s, he may have been the chief purveyor of drugs and patent medicines in town. In 1895, perhaps because of the increasing workload as town clerk as well as his age, he sold the business to Harvey P. Bissell, who made it solely a pharmacy.

The sale was nicely timed for Scott but not so much for Bissell; four months after the transfer, the Great Fire of 1895 leveled 10 buildings on the east side of Main Street, including Bissell’s Pharmacy. Harvey Bissell quickly erected a new building that lasted until 2005 when it, too, burned down. But the venerable Bissell Pharmacy did not die in that fire either, and is still going strong today, located a couple hundred yards behind its original home.

Fortunately for the town, Hiram Scott had made sure the various town clerk and probate records were safe — among the buildings destroyed in 1895 was the 20-year-old “Town House,” an all-wood structure that preceded the present town hall. Even before the Town House was built, Scott had acquired a vault to protect the records — which included about 20 large books of  deeds, births, marriages and deaths.

 Scott talked about this during his address at the town’s 200th birthday celebration in 1908 at the town hall.

“It is very remarkable that our records have been so well preserved,” he said. “For about 150 years the town records were kept in private houses — the residences of the town clerks — and not until 1853 was a safe or vault provided for their safe keeping, then a vault was built and used 20 years, then safes were bought and placed in the Town House which was built on this spot in 1876.

“In 1895, the Town House was destroyed by fire, and the books came out safe and uninjured, except that the bindings of 40 volumes were so damaged that they had to be rebound.”

Being a merchant and town official was hardly all of Colonel Scott’s community involvement. In 1843, he was chosen colonel of the 24th Regiment of Connecticut Militia, and remained in command of that unit until the state militia was succeeded by the Connecticut National Guard. In 1862, during the Civil War, he organized a company of National Guard in Ridgefield, was chosen its captain, and served as such for five years. Despite the lower rank of the more recent position, he always preferred to be called Colonel Scott.

He was for most of his career a trial justice, which meant he presided over the town court that handled relatively minor offenses. One of his more sensational trials took place on April 2, 1887 involving Henry Mead, William Crofut, Eugene Keeler, and Mrs. F. B. Daniels, who had been arrested for illegally selling booze in Ridgefield, a dry town back then. “Probably no crusade against illicit liquor-selling has created such agitation of the public mind in this town,” The Ridgefield Press said of the cases. The town even retained an attorney, J. Belden Hurlbutt of Norwalk, to prosecute the cases — there were no lawyers practicing in Ridgefield back then (imagine that!).  Justice Scott’s findings sounded not unlike the sentences a modern court might hand down: Mead plea-bargained a fine of $30 plus costs on one count. Mrs. Daniels and Keeler maintained their innocence, were found guilty and fined $35 and $30 respectively; both said they would appeal to the Connecticut Superior Court. Crofut was “let off with costs.”  

Long after he left teaching, Scott remained interested in education, serving on the equivalent of the school board that oversaw the operation of the Center School where he once taught.

During the Civil War he was a deputy collector of internal revenue, after President Lincoln and Congress created an internal revenue agency to collect income taxes to pay for the war. (The income tax was repealed in 1872.)

Even distressed children got help from Scott. In 1875, he was among the incorporators of “The Danbury Home,” which was approved by the General Assembly “for the purposes of relieving, supporting and educating children who are homeless and destitute.”

An Episcopalian, Scott served as treasurer of St. Stephen’s Church for 20 years and was a longtime member of the vestry. His “strong counsel so ably charted the church’s financial course,” said Robert S. Haight in his “History of St. Stephen’s Church.”  

On the social side, Scott was a leader in the local chapters of the Odd Fellows and the Masons, holding top positions in both fraternal groups, locally and in the state.

Long before Ridgefield had a public library, Scott offered Ridgefielders the “Hiram K. Scott Circulating Library.” Begun in 1852, the library loaned out books for between three and nine cents a week, depending on how much the volumes cost; back then, most books sold for less than $1 brand new, and many were less than 50 cents. But 50 cents in 1850 was the equivalent of nearly $15 today. Thus, even three cents (about 88 cents today) was a fairly sizable amount of money; nonetheless, it was a lot cheaper than buying the book. The Scott library may have inspired the Library Club, formed in 1871. People paid $3 a year to belong and the money was used to buy books that were then circulated among members. After a year or so the books were sold and a new set purchased for reading.

The colonel’s books may have fed the intellectual needs of Ridgefielders, but there were more down-to-earth delights that Scott and his successor also satisfied. According to the Keith Jones of Ridgefield Historical Society,  “The town’s first soda fountain was installed as far back as 1853 by none other than Hiram K. Scott at his Main Street drug store. In an incredible stroke of fortunate timing, Scott sold his drug business to H.P. Bissell four months before the Great Fire which completely destroyed the store in 1895. Bissell rebuilt immediately and purchased a shiny new state-of-the-art ‘frigid soda and mineral water draught apparatus’ from the Peeffer & Louis Company of Boston, complete with marble body, oaken top, fancy mirror, and assorted light fixtures.”

Scott was also involved in one of several unsuccessful efforts to bring a railroad to Ridgefield center. In 1867 he was named secretary and treasurer of small group who organized the Ridgefield and New York Rail Road. This and other efforts to bring rail service to the center shocked the Danbury and Norwalk Railroad into action — two years later, it began work on its spur line from Branchville to Ridgefield center, completed in 1870.  That dampened interest on building yet another line into the center of town, and Scott’s railroad never laid a track.

Scott seemed rather progressive when it came to transportation and perhaps even exercise (to work off the ice cream consumed at the soda fountain?). Back in 1893 Ridgefield banned operators of bicycles — called “wheelmen” — from using the sidewalks on Main Street. Cyclists much preferred the well-maintained sidewalks to a muddy, rutty and dung-dotted roadway  (bicycles, not cars, were the main reason many of the busier roads in Connecticut began to be paved around the turn of the 20th Century after the League of American Wheelmen pressed for better highways.). In 1896 when he was in his 70s, Scott joined 23 people, including some other prominent citizens, in signing a petition, asking that wheelmen be allowed to use the sidewalks.  The effort failed, and it wasn’t until nearly a hundred years later that bicycles were permitted on sidewalks (as long as they don’t operate “in a reckless manner with disregard for the safety of other persons using said public sidewalk”).

Colonel Scott was still on the job as town clerk when he died in 1909 at the age of 87. He had survived three wives, and had five children. One son, Hiram Jr., briefly succeeded him as town clerk and, in 1924, son George was elected town clerk and probate judge. His descendants and relatives still live in and about Ridgefield today.

“So long a period of service in one community is a sufficient guarantee of Mr. Scott’s standing and worth as a man and citizen, as well as of his ability,” said The Commemorative Biographical Record of Fairfield County, published in 1899.

It added, “He has been through a long life...a kind of ‘general utility man’ in the community, his fellow citizens having the greatest confidence in his ability to further to success anything he undertakes, and in his integrity. In short, he has been a successful and a most useful man.”