Jeremiah Donovan: 

The Progressive Barkeeper

Folks who walk into Donovan and Mackenzie’s bar in South Norwalk are entering a bit of Ridgefield history. After all, the venerable watering hole was founded by a Ridgefield native who became a U.S. congressman — and a thorn in the side of Fairfield County conservatives — a century ago.

Donovan was the third Ridgefield native to serve in Congress.

The son of Irish immigrants, Jeremiah Donovan was born in Ridgefield on Oct. 18, 1857. A year earlier, his father, Jere Donovan, paid $25 for an acre of undeveloped land in Branchville, probably on the north side of the then-new highway, Branchville Road, a little west of Old Branchville Road. In 1870, when Jere Donovan sold the property to Nancy Beers, the price was $250 and it included a house.

His son, Jeremiah, attended the nearby Branchville Schoolhouse, and, some reports say,  the private academy operated by William O. Seymour in the former home of the Rev. S.G. Goodrich on High Ridge, opposite Parley Lane. 

By 1870, he was living in Norwalk where his family had apparently moved, and 10 years later, was listed as a “wholesale liquor dealer” in the 1880 census.

In 1889, he established what became Norwalk’s longest-lasting tavern, long called Donovan’s and now Donovan and MacKenzie’s, located at Washington and Water Streets. “Donovan’s was a second home to local politicians during its colorful history, including a number of presidential candidates ‘taking a break’ while making their stomp through New England,” the bar’s current owners report.

Donovan continued as a barkeeper until 1898 when the politics that had been nightly discussed at his tavern began to become his profession. Already active in the Democratic party, he had been elected a member of the city council, was chosen a deputy sheriff, and served as a delegate to every Democratic National Convention from 1896 to 1916.

He was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1903 and 1904, then served in the state senate from 1905 to 1909. Finally, in 1912, he was elected a congressman, defeating Ebenezer J. Hill, who had served nine terms and had been a powerful figure in the House.

A wire service story published in newspapers across the country when he was elected  called Donovan “a progressive Democrat. His constituents say he is a real progressive. His honesty and independence have been strong assets to his political ambitions. He has always fought on the side of the people against the domination of monopoly and was a bitter opponent of the railroad lobby.  He was largely responsible for the act establishing a public service commission in Connecticut.”

He served from March 4, 1913 to March 3, 1915. But Hill had the last laugh, defeating Donovan in his bid for re-election, probably because the more conservative rural towns in the district — such as New Canaan, Wilton, Greenwich, and Darien — rallied to return him. Unfortunately for Congressman Hill, he died two years later.

After his defeat, Donovan returned to more local politics and ran for mayor of  Norwalk, winning office from 1917 to 1921. He was known not only as a progressive, but a generous man and for three of the four years was mayor, he turned over his entire salary to Norwalk Hospital.

He retired from politics in 1921 and died in 1935 at the age of 77.

Frederick Dielman: 

A Well-Rounded Artist

Frederick Dielman, a celebrated artist of his era, was especially known for his murals, both painted and mosaic. The mosaic panels in the Library of Congress, entitled Law and History, are often cited as his best-known works, but many of his paintings and illustrations were widely seen, and often reproduced.

One of two Ridgefielders to be president of the prestigious National Academy of Design — the other was architect Cass Gilbert — Dielman was born in Hanover, Germany, on Christmas Day, 1847. As a child came to Baltimore where he graduated from Calvert College in 1864. He  was a topographer with the United States Engineers from 1866 to 1872 and his work included surveying potential routes for canals through the Allegheny Mountains of Virginia. 

In the 1870s, he decided to pursue art, and studied at the Royal Academy of Munich, Germany.  “He may have had a natural artistic talent as it is recorded that he published his first drawing, ‘A Confederate Raid in Maryland,’ at age 16,” said a Library of Congress biography. 

He maintained a studio in New York City for many years.  

Dielman was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1881, serving as president from 1899 to 1909. He was a founder of the Society of American Artists in 1877. Off and on between 1878 until 1903, he taught at the Art Students League of New York, and was director of the Art Schools of the Cooper Union in New York from 1905 to 1931. There, he taught both day and evening classes until he was 84 years old. 

“It is believed that he taught more American art students than any other art professor,” the Library of Congress said.

A  former student once recalled, “When Professor Dielman lectured to us, he was already well over 60. But he had a buoyancy of spirit and a twinkle in his eye which belied his years… The lectures were absorbingly interesting and sank deeply into our consciousness.”

In 1883, Dielman married Lilla Marion Benham, daughter of Major General Henry Washington Benham, an 1837 graduate of West Point.  (Dielman’s portrait of his father-in-law is in

the West Point Museum.) The Dielmans had three children, one of whom became a painter and sculptor, Ernest Benham Dielman (1893-1972), who lived here as a boy. 

The couple moved around 1900 to a home off Rockwell Road called “The Boulders,” a name inspired by the rocky terrain.  (When he developed the property in the 1950s, Jerry Tuccio recalled the estate name in the road names, Boulder Hill Lane and Road.  Local legend says that the British engaged in a small skirmish with the colonists atop this hill during the Battle of Ridgefield in April 1777.)

When Dielman died in 1935 at age 87 at Boulder Hill, he was the oldest member of the National Academy of Design. He is buried in New Windsor, Md., northwest of Baltimore, where he grew up as a boy.

In 1933, when Dielman was 85, he was asked what he considered “the best recipe for a happy, well-rounded life,” the Library of Congress reported. “The artist said: ‘I think if a man tries to ascertain what is his probable function in life and then carries it out honestly, sincerely and with as little pretense as possible, he is pretty sure to come out right.’”

Edwina Eustis Dick: 

The Contralto Who Cared

Edwina Eustis Dick was a singer who spent as much time helping others as she did at her career.

Born in New York in 1908, Edwina Eustis was one of the youngest singers to win a scholarship to Juilliard, doing so before even graduating from high school. She also studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and, after graduating, won the coveted Naumburg Award.

As a contralto, she sang leading roles with opera companies in New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, and other cities, and was a soloist with the New York Philharmonic and other leading orchestras, singing under Stokowski, Toscanini, Reiner, Iturbi, and Metropoulos. The New York Times once said she “possessed one of the most richly satisfying mezzo-soprano voices of our time.” (Her voice can still be heard on Sony Masterworks recordings.) 

In the 1930s, she worked with the Musicians Emergency Aid to help create jobs for unemployed musicians. She also worked with special education children in a New York City public school where she was successful in teaching music to a 16-year-old boy, who was unable  to speak, read, or write.

During World War II,  Eustis performed more than 1,000 times during a two and a half year USO tour that took her to all five Atlantic and three Pacific theatres. The songs of her regular program were always chosen by the troops from lists posted on bulletin boards ahead of her arrival. She also sang the church services with chaplains and for the wounded in hospital wards. While she was in Italy with the Fifth Army, she sang as many as seven church services on a single Sunday.

Among her more unusual performances were singing before the Shah of Iran and King Farouk in anti-German propaganda concerts, nine Christmas shows with a G.I. choir in Shanghai, a concert for Mrs. Douglas MacArthur and her son in Tokyo, and Holy Week services on a troop ship returning from Japan.

After the war, she undertook a pioneering project at a Long Island hospital in music therapy for the mentally ill, which led to doctors’ classifying music as “therapy.” She also trained young musicians in the new field of music therapy, and an annual scholarship in her name is offered by the American Music Therapy Association. 

Mrs. Dick and her husband, attorney Alexander C. Dick, were founding members of the American Symphony Orchestra, organized and conducted by Leopold Stokowski. Both locally and nationally, the Dicks were active in Republican politics — she served for a time as secretary of the Executive Committee of the Women’s National Republican Club. In Ridgefield she was active in the First Church of Christ, Scientist, on Main Street.  

In 1990, the Connecticut General Assembly honored “her long and successful career in music, her generous donation of time and talent to improving the lives of others, as well as her distinguished career in public service.”

She was a strong supporter of the U.S. troops and in 1991, during Operation Desert Storm, she wrote the Press: ”At a time when the men and women in our armed forces are facing their greatest test, we, at home, are facing a test as well. Our task is to maintain our unity and resolve as our troops are doing in the Persian Gulf...Our soldiers have said they have a job to do and are going to get it done. I feel I have a job to do, too, and that is to stand up in strong support of our magnificent troops.”

“Edwina was also a fun person!” said Henrietta Parsons, a friend. “She loved to body surf in the ocean—yes! an opera singer that body surfs.  Edwina and Alex had a summer house on Fire Island.  She would romp around the surf and just loved it!”

She lived  from the 1950s through the 1980s on Old Branchville Road, but moved to Heritage Village in Southbury after the death of her husband. She died there in 1997 at the age of 88. 

A road built in 1999 on part of her former homestead was named Eustis Lane.

Maude Davis: 

Flappers, Bouviers and Kennedys

In Maude Davis, Ridgefield had a link to some of the more colorful and interesting characters of the 20th Century — from the “flappers” of the 20s to the Kennedys and Bouviers of the 50s and 60s. An aunt of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy, she was the mother of an author who documented the lives of both Bouvier and Kennedy families.

Maude Bouvier was born in New York City in 1905, a daughter of John and Maude Sergeant Bouvier — her brother was Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis’s father.  She came of age in the “Roaring 20s” and in an interview with a Long Island history project, reminisced about her youthful life at Lasata, the family estate in East Hampton, and in New York City. When she and her twin sister, Michelle, were 18, their photos appeared often in the society sections of New York newspapers. “Oh, my,” she said in that 1993 interview, “those debutante parties at the Ritz Carlton! We were doing all the usual things. We went to boarding school at Miss Porter’s. We went to coming-out parties at Sherry’s. We did all the things debutantes did.”

It was the era of the flappers and Prohibition, but she was not drawn into its perils. Whiskey

and other drinks were readily available at parties, she said, “but my twin sister and I were probably the most stupid innocents in East Hampton. We never drank or smoked. I don’t know why …”

She added that, “We were from an old family in New York. We didn’t worry about keeping up with the Joneses — we were the Joneses. But we had a wonderful time, just dancing and singing at parties.”

On a stormy Labor Day in 1928, she married stockbroker John E. Davis in Lasata’s large living room. The scene is described in “The Bouviers,” one of many books written by her son, John H. Davis. “Maude remembers that just as she said, ‘I do,’ the sun streamed through the great French windows,” he wrote.  Then, the wedding party went onto the terrace where a jazz band played the Charleston. Bridesmaids and ushers bobbed to the beat, he wrote, while sister Michelle, the matron of honor, led the dancing like a high-stepping Rockette.

After her marriage, her interests turned to civic and charitable work in New York City, often involving hospitals. During World War II, Davis served as a “gray lady,” helping wounded soldiers returning from Europe. She was also a longtime volunteer at Memorial Sloan Kettering  Hospital.

From 1928 until 1998, she spent most of her summers and autumns in Ridgefield, a town she deeply loved. After renting various houses, she and her husband eventually bought 17 East Ridge, a large Victorian next to today’s East Ridge Middle School. 

Among the summertime visitors to the Davis home was her young niece, Jacqueline Bouvier, and the Davises were often a part of Bouvier and Kennedy gatherings. Maude Davis attended the wedding, inauguration and funeral of John F. Kennedy.

She remained in the East Ridge house until the death of her husband in 1966 when she bought

a much smaller place on New Street that had previously belonged to Metropolitan Opera star Geraldine Farrar (Farrar had called the place “Butterfly,” after Madama Butterfly, the opera in which she had starred with Enrico Caruso).

She was an expert golfer and, with her husband, was among the founders of Silver Spring Country Club. 

Over the years she was also active in the Ridgefield Garden Club, serving a term as its president. For many years she fought to keep the town beautiful. For instance, in 1973, when she discovered that a road widening project on Peaceable Ridge had resulted in the cutting of many dogwoods, she wrote The Ridgefield Press, decrying the work and calling for more care in highway planning. “In the spring when the dogwood was in bloom, right here in Ridgefield we had our own Greenfield Hill,” she wrote, referring to the location of the famous Dogwood Festival in Fairfield. “The dogwood has to rank high on everybody's list [but] one more lovely dogwood-lined road has bitten the chain-saw dust.”

As Davis grew older she sold Butterfly and would stay instead at The Elms Inn on Main Street until she became too frail to do even that.

In 1999, “shortly before she died, she expressed a fervent wish to see Ridgefield again,” said her son John. Arrangements were made to have her stay in an inn and to celebrate her 94th birthday at the Silver Spring Country Club. But by the time of her birthday, she had become too weak to make the trip from New York City. 

“She died peacefully in her New York apartment after her desire to go to Ridgefield one more last time was thwarted,” John Davis said.

Fanny Crosby: 

A Pioneering Woman of Song

Fanny Crosby was among the leading hymn-writers of all time, a blind woman who spent her formative years in Ridgefield. She wrote thousands of hymns, including “Blessed Assurance,” “Safe in the Arms of Jesus,” “Praise Him! Praise Him!,” and “Close to Thee.”

But while her production of religious music brought her fame, she was accomplished — even a pioneer — in others fields as well.

Born in 1820 in nearby Brewster, N.Y., Frances Jane “Fanny” Crosby was blinded at six weeks by a disease. A few months later, her father died, leaving his 21-year-old wife a widow. 

Fanny and her mother came to Ridgefield when she was nine, living with Mr. and Mrs. Elijah Hawley on Main Street on the south corner of Branchville Road in a house that’s no longer there. 

 “Mrs. Hawley, a kind Christian lady…who had no children of her own, became deeply interested in me, and under her supervision I acquired a thorough knowledge of the Bible,” Crosby wrote in one of her two autobiographies: “She gave me a number of chapters each week to learn, sometimes as many as five…and at the end of the first 12 months, I could repeat a large portion of the first four books of the Old Testament and the four Gospels.

 “The good Mrs. Hawley was kind in every respect and sought to teach me many practical lessons that I now remember with gratitude and affection.” 

When  Crosby was about 15, she left Ridgefield to attend the New York Institute for the Blind. Soon after graduation from the Institute in 1843, at the age of 23, she worked as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., pleading for support of education for the blind. There she became the first woman to speak in the United States Senate. 

She later appeared before the joint houses of Congress, offering along with her oration this brief poem:

Ye, who here from every state convene,

Illustrious band! may we not hope the scene

You now behold will prove to every mind

Instruction hath a ray to cheer the blind.

Crosby soon joined the teaching staff of the New York Institute for the Blind. At this time she was beginning her writing career, producing non-religious poetry, and there she struck up a close friendship with a fellow teacher who was just 17 years old. His name was Grover Cleveland. The two spent time together after classes. and the teenaged future U.S. president often wrote down poems that Fanny dictated to him. 

She wound up publishing four books of secular poetry.

Crosby’s poetry-writing soon led to song-writing, though most were at first secular or, as she called them, “people’s songs” — probably what we’d today call folk songs. She wrote political songs, patriotic songs (especially during the Civil War), and even cantatas. During the war, she began writing religious songs, both under her own name and pseudonyms, and over her career she penned the lyrics to more than 8,000 hymns.

Crosby once said she wanted her hymns to win a million souls for Christ, and her words were certainly available to many more than a million:  Books containing her songs are said to have sold at least 100 million copies.

Many of Crosby’s hymns were published by Biglow and Main of New York City, one of the first publishers of sacred music. The “Biglow” was Lucius Horatio Biglow who, in 1889, bought an 18th century house on Main Street to create a fine retreat from the city. (When his daughter, Elizabeth Biglow Ballard, died in 1964, she bequeathed that estate to the town. Today, it is Ballard Park.)

Biglow probably came to Ridgefield because of his partner. The “Main” of Biglow and Main was Sylvester Main, born in Ridgefield in 1817 and a childhood friend of Fanny Crosby. “Among the playmates who used to gather on the village green was Sylvester Main who was two or three years older than I,” Crosby recalled.

“He was a prime favorite with the gentler sex, for he used to protect us from the annoyances of more mischievous boys.”

Sylvester Main became a singing-school teacher and wound up in New York City, compiling books of hymn music. He went to work for William Bradbury, music publisher and hymnist, and when Bradbury died around 1868, he and Lucius Biglow partnered to take over the firm, calling it Biglow and Main.

Sylvester’s son, Hubert Platt Main, was also born in Ridgefield, and composed more than 1,000 works, including the music for hundreds of popular hymns of the mid-19th century, among them “We Shall Meet Beyond the River,”  “Blessed Homeland,” and “The Bright Forever” — the words of the last two were written by Fanny Crosby.  

In the 1915 book, “Fanny Crosby’s Story of Ninety-Four Years,” she called him “one of my most precious friends.” The book includes a picture of the two, seated together, called “Fast Friends”

Fanny Crosby died in 1915 at the age of 94 and is buried in Bridgeport. She had been married for a while, but eventually separated. The couple had one child, who died as a baby. 

Hubert Main, who died in 1925, is buried in New Jersey beneath a stone that says, “We shall meet beyond the river.” —based on “Hidden History of Ridgefield”

The Crocker Family:

A Dynasty on Stage and Screen

A Ridgefield harness-maker and a Ridgefield farmer’s widow joined in marriage nearly 200 years ago and wound up beginning what was to be a small dynasty of 19th and 20th Century actors and actresses.

But just who was William Crocker and how did he and his wife Anna manage to create two of the 19th Century’s better-known actresses — one of whom became the mother and grandmother of more actors, including a movie star knighted by the King of England?

What we know of William and Anna Crocker is based on old and sometimes confusing and conflicting records. William was baptized in 1790 in New Haven, a twin son of Daniel and Anna Crocker. His father was a Presbyterian minister who later served congregations in Pound Ridge, Redding and New Fairfield.

In 1814, when he was 23, and living in Ridgefield, William Crocker married Maria or Almira (records use both names) Dauchy, a member of an old Ridgefield family. Historian Silvio Bedini describes him as a harness-maker who worked at the Big Shop, a factory on West Lane where the First Congregational Church is today. He belonged to St. Stephen’s Parish, and served on a committee that led repairs to the aging church building then in use.

However, various sources, including obituaries of his daughter Elizabeth, describe him as a clergyman. He never served in that capacity in Ridgefield, and  no record of his being a minister elsewhere in the area could be found. In the index to his “History of Ridgefield,” George L. Rockwell lists three references to “Crocker, Rev. William,” but none has anything to do with religion. 

William had a son named William Austin Crocker. A William A. Crocker was serving as a minister in New Fairfield in the 1850s, long after our William had died. Perhaps the son was confused with the father.

William Sr. lived in Ridgefield most, if not all of his adult life, died in Ridgefield in 1835 at the age of 45, and is buried in Ridgefield.

He and Almira/Maria had four children. She died in March 1824 and by that August, William had married the widow Anna Smith of Ridgefield. He was 33, she 31. The minister who performed the ceremony was the Rev. Daniel Crocker, William’s father. 

Anna or Ann Seymour was born in Ridgefield and had first married Czar Smith, a Ridgefield farmer. He died in 1817, aged 28 — “his death was caused by a severe cold taken while hunting foxes,” says a genealogy.

William and Anna had five children together, including daughters Elizabeth, born in 1830, and Sarah, born in 1833.

Some accounts say Elizabeth was born in Ridgefield, others say Stamford. Most accounts say Sarah was born in Ridgefield.

Both became well-known, professional actresses in New York and London.

Elizabeth Crocker made her acting debut at the age of 15, performing in New York City’s Park Theatre as Amanthis in a play called “The Child of Nature.” She went on as a teenager to do many roles on the stage.

In 1847, at the age of 17, she married David P. Bowers, a popular actor from Philadelphia, and throughout nearly a half century on the stage, she was usually known as “Mrs. D. P. Bowers.”  David died 10 years after they were married. A few years later, Elizabeth married a Dr. Brown of Philadelphia, and he, too, died. Late in life she married actor J. C. McCullom, with whom she had  performed for many years. He died five years before her.

Mrs. Bowers appeared chiefly on stages in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, and was also involved in managing several theaters. Her roles in the 1850s were described by The New York Times as “the high-born, sympathetic ladies of the romantic drama, the tearful heroines of tragedy, and the coquettes of old comedy.”

In 1861 she appeared in London at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre and later at the Lyceum.

“Mrs. Bowers acquired a good deal of money and retained her vogue for many years,” The Times said in her obituary. “In the winter of 1879-80, she and Edwin Booth toured and starred together. She continued to appear on the New York stage until her death in 1895 at the age of 65. 

Her younger sister, Sarah, was also an acclaimed and popular actress. She made her debut in Baltimore  in 1849, at the age of 16, and went on to play several leading parts as a teenager. 

In May 1852, she married the actor Frederick B. Conway, and thereafter, the two often  appeared together in plays. Like her sister, she performed for a while in England, including at the Sadler's Wells Theatre in London. After she and her husband returned to America, they went on an extensive — and The Times said “profitable” — tour of American stages. 

In 1864 Sarah acquired and managed the new Brooklyn Theatre, where for nine years her husband played leading parts; some have called the operation the first stock company in America. 

“Sarah Conway possessed a tall and graceful figure and an expressive countenance, and was a versatile actress and a popular theatre manager,” said one theater historian.

She died in 1875.
Sarah was the mother of actress Marianne "Minnie" Conway, born around 1852, who has become better known as the mother of two major actors than as a stage personality. Minnie died in 1896, leaving behind sons, Frederick Conway Tearle and Godfrey Seymour Tearle. 

Born in 1878 in New York, Conway Tearle, as he was known, started his career in the 1890s on the stages of America and Great Britain. “His big break came at the age of 21 when in Manchester, England, without any preparation, he was called upon to play Hamlet after the lead actor took ill just prior to the first act,” said a 1916 biography.

In 1910, he began playing in silent movies and by the 1920s, “he became the highest paid male film actor for several years,” The Times said in his obituary. He played alongside such stars as Mary Pickford in silent films and then moved into “talkies.” In all he appeared in more than 100 movies.

He continued to perform on both stage and screen until his death in 1938 at the age of 60.

Though born in New York City, Conway’s brother, Godfrey Tearle, grew up in England, and wound up specialized in portraying what a biographer called “the quintessential British gentleman” on the stage and in both English and American films. 

He started out a Shakespearean actor. “He has been described as the greatest Othello of our time,” The Times said.

After four years  in the Royal Artillery in World War I, he resumed his stage career but also started making motion pictures. He appeared in more than three dozen silent and sound movies, including portraying Professor Jordan in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps” in 1935. 

He was also active in the profession, helping found the British Actors Equity Association and serving as its president for 10 years.

In 1951, King George VI knighted Sir Godfrey Tearle for his contributions to the British theatre.

His last film role, playing a bishop in “The Titfield Thunderbolt,” was in 1953, the year of his death at the age of 68.

Godfrey’s middle name was Seymour, which no doubt harkened back to his great grandmother, born Anna Seymour, the Ridgefield woman who began this dynasty in the 1830s. One wonders whether the family held her in some sort of special regard as an inspiration for her two daughters who went into the theater. Certainly, there was some magic somewhere in the Crocker-Seymour clan of Ridgefield.

Charles E. Jennings: 
A Boy of War

Charles Jennings is one of the least known and yet more unusual servicemen buried in Ridgefield. Unlike most who joined the military, Charles Jennings was barely 16 years old when he signed up with the Union Navy. And he wasn’t much older when he died in the service of his country — the facts of which are incorrectly reported on his official Civil War monument.

The Civil War has been called “The Boys’ War” because so many soldiers were younger teenagers. Some experts estimate around 100,000 enlistees in the Union and Confederate armies  were 15 years old or younger; 300 were younger than 13. Most of these teenagers joined as musicians, especially drummers. But Charles Jennings was old enough that he was assigned to do a man’s work aboard large vessels.

The Ridgefield town clerk’s records report that Charles Edgar Jennings was born on March 23, 1848, in “School District Number 11,” which was the Florida District, north of Branchville. His parents were Anson and Nancy Jane Jennings “of Reading.” The 1860 census lists Anson as a farmer in Redding (but the town has no record of Charles’s birth).

Why would Ridgefield record the birth of someone from Redding? Maps published in 1856 and 1867 suggest that the Jennings family lived on Simpaug Turnpike, just north of the railroad trestle; that’s in Redding, but it’s right on the Ridgefield town line. Back then towns often shared schooling duties near their borders, and it is probable that the Jennings’ family was served by the Florida School District; the Florida Schoolhouse on the corner of Florida and Florida Hill Roads was closer to their house than any schoolhouse in Redding (or Ridgefield). 

It was an official of the Florida District who reported Charles’s birth, probably expecting that Charles would be a future pupil. And it’s quite likely that Charles did get his education at the Florida Schoolhouse.

What’s more, it’s quite possible that, although the house was in Redding, much of the Jennings farm was in Ridgefield since the best land in their neighborhood was to the west, not east, of their house — territory along the Norwalk River in Ridgefield.

Charles’s father, Anson,  died March 3, 1861, at the age of 60. He must have known the end was coming, for he made out a will a month earlier, leaving his estate to his wife, Nancy Jane, and their children, Robert, Charles, Henry, and Mary Ann. 

Three years later, on May 3, 1864, Charles enlisted in the Navy. He was 16 years, 4 months and 21 days old, reports Charlene Henderson, who has researched Charles’s record to confirm that information on his Civil War monument is incorrect. Henderson specializes in the 17th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry regiment, to which, according to his monument, Charles belonged. She discovered that Charles E. Jennings of Redding was confused with Sgt. Charles A. Jennings of Georgetown — whose grave in Branchville Cemetery has no military marker at all, even though Charles A. was seriously wounded at Chancellorsville.

The minimum age for enlisting in the Civil War was 18, with parental permission. It is not known whether Charles lied about his age, whether military officials simply ignored his age — which often happened  —  or whether he had permission from his mother. Even young men between 18 and 20 years old were supposed to have parental permission.

Jennings was apparently assigned to two ships, the first of which was the U.S.S. New Hampshire, a former 74-gun “ship of the line” then being used as a supply vessel. He was then assigned to the U.S.S. Princeton, a former gun boat stationed in Philadelphia Harbor and used  as a “receiving ship” where new recruits were housed. At Philadelphia, aboard the U.S.S. Massachusetts, Jennings died on March 27, 1865, of what his military record filed with the City of Philadelphia called “remittent fever,” but which his death record in the Redding town hall says was typhoid fever.

The Philadelphia death record says he was 21 years old, but in fact he was just four days past his 17th birthday.

Charles Jennings is buried next to his father in Florida Cemetery in Ridgefield, just a few hundred yards down the Simpaug Turnpike from his childhood home.  The simple  veterans monument that marks his grave incorrectly calls him a sergeant, the rank earned by Charles A. Jennings (Charles E. Jenning’s rank was “landsman,” the most basic Navy level given to those with no experience at sea.) The monument also had Charles A. Jennings’ military unit in the Union Army instead of Charles E. Jennings’ naval assignment. It correctly states he was 17 years old. 

Right behind the war monument — so close that it is difficult to read — is the family’s gravestone for him. Its epitaph says he died “In sacrifice to his country.”

His mother eventually sold the farm and moved to New Jersey with her younger children Henry and Mary, Henderson reports. By 1900 she was living with her daughter, Mary, and son-in-law, in Lakewood, N.J. and died Sept. 10, 1900 in nearby Belmar.

While few other details of Charles Jennings’ life and service are known, he was probably like many other boys who enlisted with what a New York Times writer called “hopes of adventure and glory.”   Cate Lineberry said in a 2011 op-ed piece that although both the Union and Confederate Armies had rules designed to prevent children from enlisting, “that didn’t stop those who wanted to be a part of the action. Some enlisted without their parents’ permission and lied about their ages or bargained with recruiters for a trial period….Most of the youngest boys became drummers, messengers and orderlies, but thousands of others fought alongside the men.”

At least 48 boys under 18 — one of whom was only 11 years old — received the Congressional Medal of Honor. One nine-year-old grew up to become a major general in the U.S. Army.