George M. Olcott: 

The Man from Casagmo

George Olcott left Ridgefield with a strange legacy: A stone wall, a barn and a name, plus the destruction of a treasured historical building.

Olcott came to Ridgefield in 1892, buying the ancient Stebbins farm at the north end of Main Street. The house, built in 1727, had stood in the midst of the Battle of Ridgefield in April 1777 and served as a hospital for the wounded. “For many generations tourists came to see the bullet-scarred walls and the bloodstained floors of the west room, which were reminders of the conflict which took place around it,” historian Silvio Bedini wrote.

However, Olcott tore down the house, saving only the front door, and replaced it with an Italianate mansion. He called the place Casagmo, a word created from his initials, GMO, and “casa,” the Italian word for house.

And 75 years later,  a wrecking ball laid waste to Casagmo.

George Mann Olcott was born in 1835, in Brooklyn, N.Y. His father, Charles Mann Olcott, was a

founder of Olcott & McKesson, a drug firm that, after Charles’s death, became McKesson & Robbins, a name that lasted into the 1960s for a company that is today the McKesson Corporation, a pharmaceutical distributor and health care systems conglomerate that had $122 billion in sales in 2012.

    Young George attended Columbia College Grammar School. “However,” wrote his daughter, Mary, in a family history, “a youthful delight in caricature terminated his school life, for the headmaster … failed to appreciate a portrait of himself done by the young Mr. Olcott, and a caning was ordered. The boy’s father gave him his choice, either to undergo the caning or leave school. George M. Olcott left school and entered the world of business, where he achieved notable success.”

At age 16,  Olcott became a clerk in a wholesale drug firm. By 21, he was a partner in a drug and chemical importing company, soon called Dodge and Olcott, of which he eventually became president in 1904. His products were not all pharmaceuticals; a big portion of his business was the ingredients in perfumes and food flavorings. He retired when he went blind at the age of 78.

Dodge and Olcott continued in business until 1952, when the Fritzsche Brothers purchased the firm, eventually calling it Fritzche, Dodge & Olcott. In 1980, it was acquired by chemical giant, BASF, which 10 years later, sold it to Givaudan, an international flavor and fragrance company.

Olcott became involved in the local social and business life of the town, serving as president of the library association. He was a founder and second president of the First National Bank and Trust Company of Ridgefield (which through many mergers is now Wells Fargo). He also maintained a residence in New York City, and was on the boards of a half dozen banks and other institutions there.

A popular tale involving Olcott was related by Ridgefield Press publisher Karl Nash in 1975. “On

one occasion Mr. Olcott tangled with Samuel S. Denton, the coal and wood merchant who later owned much Ridgefield real estate [and is profiled in Who Was Who]. Denton had acquired the Paddock house, which stood just south of St. Stephen’s Church, and he started moving it up Main Street to a planned site north of Mr. Olcott’s property.

“When the house wouldn’t go between Mr. Olcott’s stone wall and the high bank on the other side of the street (now the Coffey homestead), Denton asked Olcott’s permission to remove a section of his wall temporarily to let the house pass through. Olcott refused.

“The house sat in the middle of the street for a time while Denton scratched his head for a solution. At length he decided to saw the house in half and move it in two sections instead of one. Mr. Olcott watched in amusement.”

Denton never put the two pieces together. Half of the Paddock house still stands, just north of the Casagmo northern boundary on Main Street. The other half, which was moved down around the corner onto Danbury Road, was later torn down to make way for a newer house, just opposite

Girolametti Court. And Olcott’s wall still stands today along the Main Street border of the Casagmo condominium complex.

After George Olcott died in 1917, daughter Mary lived at Casagmo until her death in 1962 at the age of 97 — a poet and genealogist, she was rather a grand dame in Ridgefield society.
According to the newsletter published for Casagmo residents, George Olcott was originally buried in Ridgefield, but his remains were eventually moved to a Brooklyn cemetery after Mary Olcott had a disagreement with the owners of the Ridgefield cemetery in which he was interred. 

As for the door to the historic Stebbins house, George Olcott had stuck it in the cellar of the

Casagmo mansion, where it sat for years. After the death of Mary Olcott, Ridgefield native

Robert A. Lee got to worrying about the future of the relic. He knew it was in the cellar and he doubted that Miss Olcott’s heirs would care about it. So Lee loaded it onto his car one day and took it to his family’s 18th Century homestead in Farmingville. There the door remained for several years until Lee finally decided to give it to the Ridgefield Library and Historical Association. Around 40 years ago, as it was moving its focus away from the historical side of its original mission, the library donated the door to the Keeler Tavern Museum, where it is today — on display for all to see, especially appropriate as the town is about to mark the 240th anniversary of the Battle of Ridgefield.

Mary Olcott’s heirs sold the property in the mid-1960s to Jerry Tuccio, the homebuilder, who

received the rezoning for the town’s first large-scale apartment development. However, Tuccio decided to stick to single-family homebuilding, and sold the rezoned land to David L. Paul, a New York attorney and apartment builder, who razed the mansion in 1968 after years of neglect and vandalism had taken their toll. Paul built 320 apartments. While virtually all evidence of the Casagmo estate was destroyed, Paul retained one major feature: The barn. He and his architect, Lee Harris Pomeroy, restored and remodeled the building into Casagmo’s community center.

Paul later also built Fox Hill on Danbury Road. There, at the recommendation of the Planning and Zoning Commission, he included condominiums. When these turned out to be quite popular, he converted Casagmo’s rentals to condos.

Many Casagmo roads bear names connected with the families that lived there, such as Stebbins Close, Olcott Way, Quincy Close, and Lawson Lane — the last two ancestors of the Olcotts. 

Peter J. Wick: 

Artist, Athlete and Advocate

Peter Wick seemed like a man of contrasts.  Tall and burly, he was a former boxer and champion wrestler who became a prolific artist, painting countless scenes of the Connecticut countryside, the New England shoreline, old sailing ships, and tropical islands.

What’s more, Wick was also a veteran New York City police sergeant who, as both a cop and a Ridgefield prosecutor,  was an advocate of intelligent treatment of wayward teenagers.

Peter John Wiczkowski was born in New York City in 1902, the son of immigrants from

Poland. (As a young man, he shortened his name to Wick.) After working as s store clerk, he joined the New York Police Department in 1924. But he was also deeply involved in athletics.

“Peter Wick was a great sports figure who enjoyed wrestling and boxing,” said his family on a website created in his memory. “He sparred with famous boxers such as Jack Dempsey and worked with Gene Tunney at the West Side YMCA in New York City. He coached young boxers and one of his best-known pupils was middleweight champion, Rocky Graziano.

“Mr. Wick later became the national amateur wrestling champ of the U.S., going on to win four AAU medals.”

He continued to box as late as 1947 in police leagues.

Wick passed on his love of those sports to city kids. In the 1920s, he became one of the

organizers of what was to become the Police Athletic League, which still provides many programs for New York’s youth.

Wick became interested in art in the 1930s, and eventually studied painting under  Howard Chandler Christy, a noted portrait artist, and Gordon Grant, who famous for his maritime scenes. In a 1945 Christy mural, which depicted negotiations between the United States government and the American Indians, Wick modeled as an Indian chief. The mural is in the Ohio State Rotunda.

When he and his wife, Henrietta, and family moved to Ned’s Mountain Road in 1940, that wild area of Ridgebury helped foster a love of nature and the countryside, and inspired many of his paintings.

He retired from the NYPD in 1953 after 29 years.  He wasn’t rich, said his grandson, Bert Fortin. His pension at the time was about $500 a month. So to bring in extra money, he began selling his paintings at shows throughout the area. In 1959 he opened a gallery on White Street in Danbury.

He later had a studio in Westport.

    Some of his paintings sold for as much as $300 ($2,700 today), helping considerably with the retirement income.

    In the 1950s Wick became involved in town government, serving as a grand juror. In 1959, he was appointed a prosecutor in the town’s Trial Justice Court, a job that wound up sparking some controversy a year later when a case he was prosecuting against two teenagers had to dropped for lack of a complaint. 

    The youths had been caught with an automobile distributor they’d stolen from a wrecked car parked at Pamby Motors. The police arrested the boys, but the owner of the wrecked car refused to press charges — a fact that Wick did not know until the last moment. Carleton   Scofield promptly quit as town justice, complaining that Wick had not properly prepared the case and maintaining that prosecutors should be attorneys. The two had argued over prosecutions in the past. 

Wick also resigned. He said that he had not gotten timely information from the police, but also did not want any further clashes with Scofield. Scofield immediately returned to his job.

However, the case also involved how tough the town should be on teenagers. Scofield was upset that the teenagers got off scot free but Wick — who had spent many years helping young people in New York City — took a different tack, saying he did not believe in being “too harsh on

young first offenders who commit misdemeanors.” A police record, he said, can considerably affect a boy’s future school and job opportunities.

In an interview in the Bridgeport Post, Wick favored reorganizing how the police handled youth cases, feeling that the police should be encouraged to “adjudicate instead of arrest,” The Post said.

 “Ridgefield is growing, and modern methods must replace some of the outmoded ones,” Wick said. “A good policeman doesn’t arrest everybody brought to his attention.” 

He recommended that the town name a committee or commission to deal with teenagers before and after they commit minor offenses.

In 1984, Wick retired to Lakeland, Fla., bringing along with him a truckload of paintings he had done in Ridgefield. He died five years later at the age of 87.

In 2015, his family offered 200 of Wick’s paintings to Lighthouse Ministries, which  provides food, clothing, shelter, and various programs to the homeless communities of Central Florida. Lighthouse scheduled an auction of his paintings that year that raised more than $16,000.

Note: A 29-page color catalogue of his paintings can be viewed here: https://issuu.com/eringeiger/docs/charity_art_catalog

Frederic and Mary Lewis: 

The Showplace on West Lane

Ridgefield had many great homes early in the 20th Century, but few surpassed Frederic and Mary Lewis’s “Upagenstit,” an estate that town historian Dick Venus called “one of our nation’s showplaces.”

At one time this 100-acre spread on West Lane employed nearly 100 people. The house had more than 40 rooms, and the estate was equipped with an indoor swimming pool, immense greenhouses, and a dozen other buildings. Many houses were provided for workers – most still exist along West Lane, Olmstead Lane and on Lewis Drive. At one point, Mr. Lewis’s private physician lived in one of them and his personal chef in another..

His home was so big that, with little modification, it became a college in the 1940s. 

Frederic Elliott Lewis was born in 1859 into a wealthy New York City family. He grew up in Manhattan and at a young age, began working for National City Bank, where his grandfather,  Moses Taylor — one of the richest men in the 19th Century — was president (National City Bank is today’s CitiBank). Lewis was eventually elected vice president of the bank.

However, poor health forced Lewis to leave his banking career at a relatively young age, and he spent time traveling in Europe,  resting in Florida, overseeing his investments, and generally

enjoying life. He was fond of yachting and at one point owned three steam-powered vessels, one of which was 70 feet long.

Mary Alice Russell was born in 1862 in Middletown, Conn., also to a very wealthy family,  involved in international trade. She and Frederic were married in 1887 and had three sons: Reginald, who later had a gentleman’s farm on South Salem Road near the New York line, but eventually moved to an estate in Norfolk, Conn.; Wadsworth, who built an estate on Great Hill Road (and has been profiled in Who Was Who); and a third son, Frederic, who died when he was 11. 

Frederic and Mary lived in Manhattan and maintained a summer home in Tarrytown for many

years, but in 1907, they decided to move farther from the city. They bought Henry B. Anderson’s estate on West Lane, west of High Ridge. The Lewises began making vast changes to the place, replacing Anderson’s house with a castle-like mansion and adding more land and many more buildings to what was eventually a 100 acre.

In 1934, The New York Times reported that the Lewises had spent nearly $2 million (some $54 million in today’s money) on the improvements at Upagenstit. They included:

• A network of paved roadways, lined with yellow brick gutters, at a time when none of the main roads in town were paved. Electric lighting was provided for many of the roads.
  
• Various barns and poultry houses for a stock that included Guernsey and Jersey cows, Berkshire pigs, and Plymouth Rock fowl.
  
• An ice house that could hold up to 3,000 cakes of ice, cut from their own pond and stored for the warm months. (A cake of ice could weigh more than 300 pounds; the foundation for the ice house was two feet deep and included a drainage system for melting ice.)
  
• Two tennis courts, one clay and the other grass.
  
• Specimen trees and shrubs from around the world — many of which are still part of the Ridgefield Manor.
  
• A stable that could handle 14 horses and a garage that could hold 15 cars.
  
• A fleet of automobiles that included Mary Lewis’s Rolls Royce that had flower vases on each side  furnished with fresh flowers each day; it featured a speaking tube through which she could converse with the chauffeur (their estate had three chauffeurs).
  
• 2,000 feet of finished stone wall, mostly along West Lane  and Golf Lane (and mostly still standing)
  
• A pond that still exists on western Lewis Drive (it later held the Ward Acres exotic waterfowl collection). A small octagon boathouse/bathhouse built by the pond was later moved to East Ridge to serve as part of the airplane-spotting facility during World War II. The building is now an office on Bailey Avenue.
  
• Last but not least, squirrel houses.  According to The Ridgefield Press in 1908, “Mr. Lewis’s favorite pets are the tame gray squirrels, having brought about 50 from Tarrytown. There are special houses for these sleek, interesting little fellows. When Mr. Lewis gives his call, he is surrounded almost at once by them.”
  

Former town historian Dick Venus described the house, which had more than 40 rooms. “The

front entrance was most impressive and was protected by a very large porte-cochere, over which there was a parapet that gave it the effect of a medieval castle — and a castle it was. The massive entrance hall was open to the third floor, on the style of the Capitol, except that it was not rotund. Mr. Lewis liked everything square.”

The house included a dairy room, which had a cream separator, a butter churn, a bottle washing machine, and a “gigantic ice cream freezer.” Milk was provided by the estates herd of cows to make butter, cream and ice cream. 

The laundry room was 40 by 30 feet in size. “It had the usual apparatus one would expect to

find in a laundry, but one thing made it unique,” Venus said. “It had a clothes drier and this was many years before the sophisticated, automatic driers of today. This drier was of simple design, but it did the job.”

The place was heated by two enormous furnaces, and had bins that could hold more than 60 tons of coal.

Dick Venus reported that every morning Mr. and Mrs. Lewis would go for a walk around their estate. While walking, Frederic “whistled constantly, in order that the people working on the estate would know that they were coming. He did not mind if they sat down again after he and Mrs. Lewis had passed by, but felt that they should give the appearance of being industrious while they were passing.”

 The whistling was especially important to the workers in the cow barn. “One of their duties each morning was to listen for Mr. Lewis’s familiar whistle,” Venus said. “The whistle was their signal to unroll a large red rubber carpet that covered the platform between the cows from one door to the other. After the Lewises had passed through the barn, the carpet was rolled up to await the next visit.”

The Encyclopedia of Biography, published in 1922, described Frederic Lewis as one who

“interested himself keenly in many subjects.” He was a “man of great influence in many departments of  [New York] city’s life, and he won and kept a host of friends who valued keenly his lovable and kindly personality and admired highly his sterling and virtuous character. His influence was always directed toward good ends, and his was one of those rare figures of which it may truly be said, ‘that the world is better off for their having lived.’ ”

He was also a generous man. “He was a friend of the worthy needy and he freely, but absolutely anonymously, has contributed largely to the relief of the distressed,” said The Press when he died in 1919 at the age of 60. “The extend of his philanthropic work will never be known as he never spoke of it and would not permit others to mention it. Many a worthy case that received timely help will never know the identity of their benefactor.”

Venus described him as “a very jovial individual, but for all his good nature, he was known to possess a vocabulary that would match that of a longshoreman, and when he felt that it fitted the occasion, he did not hesitate to use it.”

Frederic Lewis was not much involved in Ridgefield’s business and social life, though he did lend his banking expertise to the First National Bank of Ridgefield, where he served as a director (the bank, through many mergers, is now Wells Fargo). 

Mary Lewis was more involved in the town. She was responsible for a work of art that visitors

to St. Stephen’s Church have admired for a century: The large stained-glass chancel window entitled “Christ Blessing the Children.” According to research done by parishioner James Carone, Mrs. Lewis commissioned the window in 1916, shortly after the church was completed, in memory of her mother, Clara Russell Bacon. Later, her father’s name, Samuel Wadsworth Russell, was added to the memorial. The window was fashioned by J&R Lamb Studio, America’s oldest continuously operated stained-glass company; it was founded in 1857, long before Tiffany’s, and is still producing stained glass works today.

Mary Lewis was also involved in the operations at St. Stephen’s, including helping get the parish out of a financial problem caused by a church treasurer who embezzled a sizable amount of money earmarked for the new building. She and her husband also contributed $19,000 of the $25,000 cost of the new church rectory ($19,000 then would be around $425,000 today).

Mary Lewis served as the first president of the Ridgefield Chapter of the American Red Cross, founded at the start of World War I, and held that post many years. She was vice president of the District Nursing Association (now Ridgefield Visiting Nurse Association) for 31 years. 

Not surprisingly, Mary Lewis was a charter member of the Ridgefield Garden Club and involved in the club’s efforts to beautify the town. After all, she oversaw vast Upagenstit gardens and

mammoth greenhouses, working with estate superintendent John W. “Jack” Smith (see his Who Was Who profile). The Lewis estate produced many exhibits for New York City flower shows and won many awards, particularly for orchids. (As an interesting aside, Jack Smith’s obituary appeared in The New York Times. Frederic Lewis’s did not.)

With the Depression causing the family to scale down, Mary Lewis sold Upagenstit in 1934 to bridge expert Ely Culbertson and moved to Norfolk to live with her son, Reginald. She died in 1950 at the age of 87. 

In the early 1940s, the estate became Gray Court Junior College, a school for women. The college opened in September 1941 with about 100 students and 15 faculty members and lasted until around 1945. The greenhouses were used for classrooms and the glass walls were praised in a college brochure for having the “obvious” advantages “to sight and health.” One section of greenhouses was called “Crystal Hall.”

By 1949, the place had turned into the Ridgefield Lodge and Health Resort, aimed at elderly visitors, and was becoming a source of considerable controversy. First, the Zoning Commission got after the operators, alleging that they were running an illegal home for the aged, rather than a resort or hotel. Then, when the operation became the “Ridgefield Country Club,” the New York state insurance commissioner maintained that the corporation that owned the place was using it as a secret Communist Party headquarters for underground “indoctrination” and “propaganda.”

Finally, a developer named Harold F. Benel bought the place in 1954, tore down the house and created a subdivision of 46 one-acre lots on 66 acres. He called it The Ridgefield Manor Estates and used Lewis’s driveways for Manor Road and Lewis Drive, adding Fairfield Court. 

As for why the Lewises named their estate Upagenstit — “up against it” — no one is certain.

Simon Greco: 

Outspoken Artist

Artists in Ridgefield have tended to focus on their art and avoid the political limelight. Not so with Simon Greco, who spoke at many meetings, penned many letters to the editors and challenged laws, budgets, schools and other matters.

However, though even The New York Times covered his feisty ways, Greco was much better known nationally for his art, not his complaints.

“Simon Greco was an extraordinary artist,” said art historian Terence E. Hanley. “His work is mesmerizing.” 

A native of Italy, Simon Greco was born in 1917 to an Italian-American father and an Italian mother.  The family came to the United States in 1921 and settled in St. Louis where his father

worked for a gas company. Greco said that St. Louis abounded in cultural opportunities and that his early art education was acquired at the St. Louis public library. His formal education consisted of two years of high school and two years of vocational training.

“Almost entirely self-educated, Greco is widely informed in such diverse arenas as philosophy, religious history, literature, and music,” said a 1952 profile of him in the Bridgeport Sunday Post.

 By the 1940s, Greco had moved to New York to do commercial art as well as his own work. He was best known for his “magic realism” paintings, a style that was popular in the mid-20th Century, and was considered an expert at it. He became well known for two series he illustrated for Life magazine, The World We Live In in 1953 and The Epic of Man in 1956. He also painted many covers for magazines during the 1950s and 60s.

Greco’s moving to Hayes Lane in 1949 helped inspire a second direction in his art.    “Since moving to Ridgefield, my thoughts have turned more and more to the manifestations of nature with which we are surrounded, and with the problem of extending the range of ideas and thoughts which

could be adequately handled by non-objective art,” he told The Post.

 He began painting non-objective works — what some consider abstract expressionism — while continuing to produced the “magic realism” pieces. And it was the latter that were more popular. His works are in the  Smithsonian Institution, the American Museum of Natural History, the U.S. Naval Academy, and other collections. 

In Ridgefield, he became involved in the community, and was a frequent voice at town meetings and in letters to the newspaper. A Democrat, he tried in 1963 to vote in a Republican primary here in an attempt to challenge what he considered a flaw in a state law. He was unsuccessful, but his effort was covered by The Times.

He was a voice of conservatism when it came to schools, going so far as to maintain that libraries in elementary schools were wasteful. He felt that the proposed Ridgebury School should not be a spread-out affair, but an efficient, two-story, box-like building with many fewer toilets than planned. “I think it is absurd to have 12 rooms with separate toilets — if the children are so retarded beyond kindergarten that they require such toilets, then they should be in special schools,” he wrote in 1960.  “We should not waste tax money on extravagant buildings. We should spend it instead where it will do the most good, that is, in securing the best teachers, books and educational materials available.”

Perhaps Greco felt a closeness to teachers and books. He himself taught at at various institutions in Fairfield County and, in 1968, he wrote the book, “The Art of Perspective Drawing,” for the well-known Grumbacher series.

Nonetheless, Greco criticized the way art and the arts in general were taught.  Speaking at a gathering with the Connecticut Commission on the Arts in 1964, Greco was quoted as saying, “With

everyone taking up art in schools, colleges and adult classes, art is constantly being thrown at the public and a general vulgarization of theater, books, music, and art has descended upon us,” he declared. “When you cater to the masses on a cultural level, you debase the arts. Instead of education and elevation, our society is getting entertainment. Art is not entertaining.”

In 1964, Greco moved to North Salem Road and a few years later, relocated to Fairfield after joining the staff of the University of Bridgeport. He later lived in Westborough, Mass., where he died in 2005 at the age of 87.

Ted Shane: 

Humorist from Hell

How can a humorist be a “lady” from hell? 

Ted Shane wrote books and magazine articles, and created the “Cockeyed Crosswords” that were popular from the 1930s to the 1960s and appeared in various magazines. But before he became a humorist and writer, he went to Canada to enlist in the Black Watch, the famous kilted Scots division called the “Ladies from Hell.” Only 16 when he joined, he fought in World War I with the division. 

Theodore Sidney Shane was born in New York City in 1900. His father was a tailor who had immigrated from Hungary in the 1880s and his mother was the daughter of German immigrants. After the war, Shane studied at Columbia, graduating in 1923, and began writing book and movie reviews and humor pieces for magazines that included the old Liberty, where his humorous crosswords also appeared. 

He came to Ridgefield in 1930 when he married Margaret Woodward Smith Boyd, also a writer, and lived here off and on until his death — he and Peggy Boyd also spent three years in Hollywood writing for MGM and 12 years in Europe. 

He wrote profiles, particularly of sports figures, for Collier's, Saturday Evening Post, Reader’s Digest, and other magazines, and worked as editor of 1,000 Jokes magazine. 

He published several books of crossword collections as well as “Heroes of the Pacific” (1944) and, though he did not drink, the light-hearted and popular “Bar Guide” (1950), illustrated by VIP (Virgil Partch). 

In 1940 Shane and writer-broadcaster Lowell Thomas wrote “Softball, So What?” about their

experiences on Thomas’s famous softball team, The Nine Old Men.  The Nine Old Men played in Ridgefield and in other places for benefit games in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The team included the likes of heavyweight champion boxer Gene Tunney, humorist Colonel Lemuel Q. Stoopnagle (F. Chase Taylor), cartoonist Paul Webb and Novelist Homer Croy.

Among the many celebrities who played in their games were critic Heywood Hale Broun, Believe It Or Not creator Bob Ripley, self-improvement guru Dale Carnegie, and baseball great Babe

Ruth — Shane wrote: “A .100 softball hitter, Ruth has made only one homer — off Broun, one of the softest softball pitchers in the game.” Among the people who came to watch the Old Men play was President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a friend of Thomas.

In 1946, Shane tested the local political waters, running unsuccessfully for state senator from Ridgefield’s district. He was a Democrat in a very Republican district and lost mightily.

Ted Shane died in Ridgefield in 1967 at the age of 66.

In 1951 his daughter, Gretchen Shane, married Egbert W. Swackhamer (1927-1994) at Shane home in Ridgefield. Swackhamer later became a television director who did episodes for M*A*S*H, L.A. Law, Murder She Wrote, Bewitched, The Partridge Family, and The Flying Nun. He specialized in directing pilot shows for TV; of his 27 pilots, 18 became series, including Law & Order, Eight Is Enough, Quincy, M.E., S.W.A.T, and Nancy Drew.

Wadsworth R. Lewis: 

Millions in Gifts

Countless thousands of Ridgefield people have benefited from the “Lewis Fund,” but few have known who “Lewis” was. 

Since it began distributing money in 1950, the Wadsworth R. Lewis Fund has given local charitable, educational or religious organizations more than $3.4 million. In today’s money, if inflation were calculated into those gifts, that’s more than $15 million in help.

Waddy Lewis would be pleased.

Born in Tarrytown, N.Y., in 1889, Wadsworth Russell Lewis was a son of Frederic E. and Mary Lewis. Around 1908 his parents bought the West Lane estate of Henry B. Anderson and began turning the 100-acre spread into one of the grandest of country homes of the era. Called Upagenstit, the estate is now the Ridgefield Manor, including Lewis Drive and Manor Road.

“Waddy,” as he was called, grew up in New York City and at Upagenstit. As a young man, he apparently led a life of leisure; at the age of 27, when he registered for the draft on June 5, 1917 in Ridgefield, he listed “none” as his occupation. But as World War I loomed on the horizon, he donated his yacht to the U.S. Navy to use to patrol New York Harbor. Soon thereafter, when he joined the Navy himself, he was put in command of his former vessel which patrolled New York Harbor. He later served in Washington as a lieutenant in the Censoring Department of the War College.

After the war, Lewis spent more time in Ridgefield. According to town historian Dick Venus, he enjoyed local sports and in the 1920s, even sponsored a Ridgefield baseball team, buying the uniforms and equipment, and paying some semi-pro players to beef up the squad. They came known as “Waddy’s All-Stars.”

Venus tells the story of one game at the old high school field on East Ridge at which Lewis, in an effort to please the crowd, offered $5 for each home run hit by a member of the Ridgefield team. “The offer was only a few minutes old when a conference with the opposing pitcher was held behind the old grandstand,” Venus said. “The result was an eruption such as has seldom been seen on any ballfield. Baseballs began to rain on Governor Street and some even reached the lawn of the state police barracks (now the Ridgefield Police headquarters). 

“They were not fooling Waddy — he was well aware that he was being taken. However, he enjoyed the demonstration as much as the players and the fans, and he had a broad smile as each crack of the bat sent the ball soaring in the air.”

It wasn’t just athletes that Lewis helped out. In the late 1930s, he came to the rescue of The Ridgefield Press which, a couple years earlier, been purchased by the brothers Karl and John Nash.

John, a longtime friend of Lewis, explained what happened: “My brother and I had the Ridgefield Press and in the early days, we were really struggling. The previous owner of the building sold it to us with a mortgage of $9,000. Rather unexpectedly one day, they approached us and wanted us to close out the mortgage.

“We, of course, didn’t have the money. We managed to negotiate them down to $3,000, but we didn’t have that either.

“Somehow, Waddy heard about it, probably through our mutual friend, Joe Donnelly, who was the attorney on the original deal. One day he showed up with a chauffeur-driven Lincoln, and told us that he was going to take care of the problem. He drove us down to New York to his bank. He asked the bank manager to arrange a loan at a favorable rate for his friends. The bank manager said, ‘Of course, Mr. Lewis. Would a rate of 2% be okay?’ That solved the problem for us and saved the paper.”

In 1934, Mary Lewis, by then a widow, sold Upagenstit. Waddy Lewis, however, enjoyed Ridgefield so much that he decided to build his own estate here in 1939, located between Limestone and Great Hill Roads. He called the place Taghkanick, an Indian word that some have translated as “wild place” and others, as a “clearing in a forest.”

Lewis’s parents were always interested in the welfare of the people in their town. That sense of community was especially strong in their son and particularly as he grew older, he became more interested in the “serious” side of community life. He became a member of the Board of Education, served on the Draft Board, and during World War II, the Ration Board. He was on the building committee that renovated the town hall around 1940.

He was also an award-winning grower of orchids, helped along by the premier orchid expert, John W. “Jack” Smith, who was his estate superintendent (also profiled in Who Was Who). 

Lewis was also an avid golfer and among his many friends on the local links was Alex Santini, a well-known Ridgefield caterer, chef and restaurateur. At some point Lewis gave Santini a putter. But it was no ordinary putter and Santini was no ordinary player. According to Dick Venus, “it was an exceptionally large putter and weighed considerably more than the ordinary club.” Santini used it not only for putting, but for driving, pitching and chipping. “Compensating somehow for its flat face, Alex was able to tee off and send the ball great distances,” Venus said. With that one putter, “he was able to beat other good golfers who used a complete set of clubs.”

In 1941, Lewis became ill for several months. While he recovered he was noticeably more frail. On Nov. 3, 1942, shortly after returning home from a meeting of the local Draft Board, he suffered a heart attack and died; he was only 53.  

Lewis had established the fund in his will, stating that grants should benefit non-profits “which are conducted in whole or in part for the benefit or use of the residents of Ridgefield and its vicinity.” However, he stipulated that it not begin functioning until his mother had died — the cost of her care would apparently affect the amount of the fund. Mary Lewis died in 1950.

And it was in 1950 that the Lewis Fund made its first grants, totaling $15,000 — that’s equal to about $152,000 in today’s dollars. By 1983, the annual grants had risen to $59,000 ($144,000 in today’s dollars). 

In 2015, grants totalling $116,000 were made to some 45 organizations.

Thus, the grants today amount to about eight times more than when they began. Yet, thanks to inflation, their buying power is noticeably less.

Waddy Lewis’s Taghkanick later became the home of Henry and Clare Boothe Luce, and then of the rare-book dealer, Hans Peter Kraus (all three of whom are profiled here in the Who Was Who series). The house is still in use today, though much of the estate’s land has been subdivided in recent years.

George L. Rockwell:

Mr. History

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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