Frederic Remington:

He Knew the Horse

Frederic Remington’s pictures and sculptures depicting the Old West are in countless museums and collections, and bring large prices: A sculpture in bronze, called “The Wounded Bunkie,” sold at auction for $5.6 million in 2008 while an oil painting, “A Reconnaissance,” fetched $5.2 million at a 1999 auction. 

Even postal people love him: Few Americans outside of presidents like George Washington have been so extensively remembered on United States postage stamps—at least six bear his art or his face.

Unfortunately for Remington, his stay in Ridgefield was brief. He died six months after arriving.

Though his fame is based on the Old West that he so colorfully documented, Frederic Sackrider Remington spent all but a few years of his life in the Northeast. He was born in 1861 in Canton, N.Y., son of a newspaper editor who wanted him to pursue that career. 

While he attended military schools in Vermont and Massachusetts, Remington found he loved to draw more than to write or fight, and he wound up attending the School of Fine Arts at Yale, where he also played football for the Bulldogs. His first published illustration was a cartoon of a “bandaged football player” for a student newspaper. 

He left Yale when his father became seriously ill and died. With an inheritance in hand, Remington decided against returning to college, and headed west in 1881 to seek adventure; he was only 19 years old. In the next few years, he traveled widely in the western states and territories, working as a cowboy, a sheep rancher, a saloon owner, a reporter, and at other jobs—all the while sketching what he was seeing. 

Around 1885, he came back east, studied at the Art Students League, and began an illustrating career with Harper’s Magazine in the days before photographs were common in publications. He returned to the West briefly to cover the Indian Wars in Apache country for Harper’s. By then, he was earning $1,200 a year as a commercial artist, a sizable sum at the time. “That’s a pretty good break for an ex cow-puncher,” he said. 

Remington went on to illustrate not only for magazines, but also books, and wound up writing a half dozen books of his own about the West. Virtually all of his illustrations, his paintings and later his sculpture dealt with the Western themes.  “I knew the wild riders and vacant lands were about to vanish forever,” he wrote. “And the more I considered the subject, the bigger the forever loomed.”

While he became widely praised as an illustrator, Remington wanted recognition as an artist. By the turn of the 20th century, he was devoting much of his time to painting and sculpture—and even burned many earlier works he felt were too much like illustrations.
Remington was living and working in New Rochelle, N.Y. when he decided he wanted a wilder environment. (Another noted New Rochelle artist-illustrator later did the same; Norman Rockwell moved first to Vermont, and later Stockbridge, Mass.) 

There are several stories about why Remington chose Ridgefield. One was that the town was recommended by his lifelong friend, Alonzo Barton Hepburn, with whom he had grown up in upstate New York; Hepburn, Chase Bank president, had recently built a mansion on High Ridge, called Altnacraig. 

Another explanation was that Poultney Bigelow, a close friend who was editor and founder of Outing magazine, had recommended Ridgefield for both its wildness and its sophistication. Bigelow lived in nearby New York State and probably knew the town from visits. 

Perhaps both Hepburn and Bigelow had talked up the town to Remington, who at the same time was being strongly influenced by the Impressionist movement—and a leading impressionist, J. Alden Weir, lived in Ridgefield and was often visited by Remington’s friend, Childe Hassam.

Remington wound up buying 42 acres along Barry Avenue on which he and his wife, Eva, designed a sizable home and a state-of-the-art studio that featured a huge fieldstone fireplace, and large (for the era) plate glass windows. The estate was known as Lural Place, according to his

Ridgefield Press obituary, but another source said he called it “One Hoss Farm.” After his death the estate became known as Oak Knoll, a name that has stuck over the decades since.
Remington moved into the home in July 1909. In December, he fell ill and was eventually diagnosed with appendicitis that developed into peritonitis. His condition was said to have been exacerbated by his treating himself with laxatives and the fact that he weighed 300 pounds. 

An emergency operation was performed at his house—reportedly on the dining room table. As The Press said at the time, “The artist rallied after the operation and it was believed he would recover. Complications, however, entered into the case on Saturday and the patient sank rapidly during the night.” He died Sunday, the day after Christmas. He was only 48 years old. 

During his career Remington produced more than 3,000 drawings, illustrations, paintings, and bronzes. “The extent of what he might have been was curtailed only by his untimely death at a time when he could have had 20 years of growth ahead of him, but he was already the paramount exponent of his kind of art and the most American of them all,” said biographers Peggy and Harold Samuels.

Remington loved riding and depicting horses in action, be it on canvass or in bronze. “When I die,” he told a friend not long before his death, “I want my epitaph to be, ‘He knew the horse.’” However, his spare gravestone in Canton, N.Y., bears only his name and the years of his birth and death.
In 1965, Remington’s house was declared a national historic landmark. The studio he had in the house has been reproduced in detail at the Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, N.Y., where his family once lived. 

For years, townspeople had wanted a road name recalling the artist. From shortly after his death until well into the 1950s, various movements tried to have Barry Avenue changed to Remington Road. In fact, a 1927 map of property along Barry Avenue called the highway “Remington Road.”
A new road at the1960s Westmoreland subdivision gave the town an opportunity to commemorate the artist: Remington Road runs between Barry Avenue and Peaceable Hill Road, intersecting Barry Avenue not far from Remington’s house. 

Perhaps the artist had gotten a chance to hunt on the Westmoreland estate during his brief stay here.—from “Hidden History of Ridgefield,” History Press, 2015

Charles Recht: 

Voice of the Soviet Union

For 12 years following World War I, the United States had no formal diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. During that time Ridgefielder Charles Recht was in effect the Russian ambassador, the Russian embassy, the Russian consul and perhaps even the Russian Chamber of Commerce in this country. 

Recht, who had a home here for 15 years, was an American attorney who represented Soviet interests in the U.S. from 1921 to 1933. He was the only officially recognized contact between the two countries.

“His arguments in financial disputes for Soviet citizens against American interests were a prelude to the establishment of formal diplomatic contacts,” said The New York Times. “In his long career, the gentle, urbane lawyer also represented a variety of anarchists, radicals and persons accused of being Soviet agents.”

Recht was also a novelist, poet and translator of plays including the first English version of August Strindberg’s “Miss Julie.”

A native of Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic, he was born in 1887 and came to this country when he was 13 with his widowed mother and siblings. The family settled in Manhattan and he worked at various jobs to support the family, including employment as a librarian before he was 20. He became a citizen in 1909.

He worked his way through New York University Law School and became an attorney, but he was also associated with many of the literati of his era, including H. L. Mencken (a client), Eugene O’Neill, Sherwood Anderson, and poet Edgar Lee Masters, the attorney who wrote the “Spoon River Anthology.”

In 1915, he married Aristine Munn, a physician who belonged to a wealthy Rochester family. She died in 1952. 

Recht opposed the U.S. entry into World War I. He became an attorney for the Civil Liberties Bureau, which advised many conscientious objectors, and he served alongside such notables as Clarence

Darrow and Norman Thomas, the six-time presidential candidate (who also had a home in Ridgefield). 

After the war he represented many foreign-born anarchists and radicals who were being deported by the U.S. Government in the wake of widespread labor unrest. One was Ludwig Martens, a Marxist and an engineer. At the Soviet Union’s behest in 1919, Martens set up the Russian Soviet Government Bureau, an informal embassy in New York, that conducted a considerable amount of commercial business. The federal government declared the operation illegal, and in 1921 deported Martens, who was defended by Recht.

Impressed with Recht’s work, the Soviet Union hired him as their representative in the United States.

During the 1920s he oversaw many trade negotiations between American companies and the Soviet Union, even exchanges of motion pictures.  He made 22 trips to Russia during the period, and often carried back dispatches from Lenin to leading American intellectuals. 

In 1933, Recht turned over his duties to the new Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C., but he continued to represent various Soviet citizens and institutions throughout his career.   

Despite his close association with the homeland of communism, Recht maintained that he was never a communist. When questioned about it, he said communism was fine for a country like Russia, but “not the United States.”

Over the years, he also handled many smaller cases, including tenants fighting landlords and teachers who were fired for their views. He also fought for more liberal immigration policies.

He published several books including two novels, “Rue With A Difference” in 1924 and “Babylon on Hudson” in 1932, and a collection of his poems, “Manhattan Made.”

Recht had a house on a hill off Florida Road from 1950 until his death in 1965 at the age of 78. According to The Ridgefield Press, he and his wife, Lillian, “did not participate much in the civic affairs” of Ridgefield, but “they had a wide circle of friends here.” 

Michael Pontello: 

In Love with Ridgefield

"I love my life," Mike Pontello told a friend one day in 1999. "I love what I'm doing. I love Ridgefield. To me, Ridgefield is a romance." 

And to Ridgefield, Pontello was for years a one-man cheering squad, a smiling face who daily to promote the village —- right down to building dozens of storefront flower boxes and trash-can housings that used to line the street. 

"I'll do all I can to keep Main Street afloat," he said when times for the business district were tougher than they are now. 

Michael R. Pontello was born in 1931 but was orphaned as a boy and grew up with a family in Norwalk. He served with the Army in Korea (where he was injured by shrapnel). 

In 1955 he met Ridgefield native Agatha Mugavero and they were married a year later. 

Pontello attended barber school in New York City, and went to work for his father-in-law, Jerry Mugavero, at Jerry's Barber Shop on Main Street. He took over the business in 1970 when  Mugavero retired. 

An avid fisherman, he wrote a fishing column for The Ridgefield Press in the 1960s, always ending it, “Take a kid fishing.” In the 1980s, he began making colorful wooden toys and signs at the shop, and many of his creations have been donated to beautification efforts and for fund-raising campaigns. 

Active in town, he was a member of the Ridgefield Downtown Council and volunteered to maintain the flowers and greens within downtown Ridgefield. He was a member of the Ridgefield Volunteer Fire Department and the fire police, belonged to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Italian American Mutual Aid Society, and the Masons, and was a volunteer with Meals on Wheels. "Volunteering, it's very important," he once said. "Without volunteers you'd have nothing."

In 1990, he contributed the new town hall flagpole in memory of his wife, who had just died. 

He received many honors, among them the Chamber of Commerce Public Service Award in the 1980s. In 1991, Rotary named him Citizen of the Year. "The achievements and deeds of Mike are to known to anyone who has any appreciation of the aesthetic side of the community," said Dr. David E. Weingast, former school superintendent, at the Rotary awards banquet. "Artifice and phoniness are alien to Mike (who) has a very great love of other human beings. He's impelled to conduct good deeds." 

He also loved to talk. "Knowing Mike for five minutes meant you knew where Michael stood on damn near everything that's important,” said John Katz, who conversed with Pontello nearly every morning at the Early Bird Cafe.

In 2000, recognizing a need and seeing the right person for it, the town hired Pontello as the part-time caretaker of the village sidewalks. He continued in that job even when he began dealing with the cancer that would kill him.

To help with the costs of his illness, friends and business neighbors of his Main Street barbershop organized a ‘We Like Mike' benefit chicken dinner at the Italian Club that drew so many people it ran out of chicken. Even as he was in chemotherapy he could be seen out weeding and watering flowers on the Main Street that for years he'd cared for as if it were his own garden.

In an interview shortly before his death in 2003, when he knew his days were numbered, he told a reporter, “You roll with the punches. You know what? You’ve got to take what you’ve got.  You can’t feel sorry for yourself.” 

As for the years of cancer treatment he had endured, “The doctors are doctors — they’re not God,” he said, adding, “Enjoy what’s above ground, because some day you’ll be under it."

The outpouring of support had touched him. "People are wonderful," he said. "I never realized how much I was liked, what an impact I had."

Mike Pontello added, "I'm going to miss this town when I go.” 

Seth Low Pierrepont

Seth Low Pierrepont: 

The Man of the Park and Pond 

Seth Low Pierrepont gave much to Ridgefield during his lifetime and even more in his death. One of the town’s wealthiest citizens, he was also among the most generous, and the 314-acre Pierrepont State Park in north-central Ridgefield, part of his large estate, was his bequest. 

Mr. Pierrepont was born in 1884 in Brooklyn, N.Y., a nephew of New York mayor and Columbia University president Seth Low.  He was a Columbia graduate who was in the diplomatic service in Portugal, Italy, France, and Chile before becoming chief of the Latin-American Division of the U.S. State Department from 1911 until 1913. 

Mr. Pierrepont was on domestic duty in the Navy during World War I and, in 1921 and 1922, was assistant secretary general of the Washington Conference on Arms Limitations.

He retired from the diplomatic service in 1913 and came to Ridgefield that year, building Twixthills, his home on Barlow Mountain. He acquired various parcels of farmland, sometimes complete with houses which he provided for his employees, and assembled an estate of more than 600 acres. The property was so extensive that he hired his own private “police force” to patrol it. The house still stands off Old Barlow Mountain Road.

He quickly became active in local government, and represented Ridgefield in the General Assembly from 1921 to 1927, and there, helped create the Connecticut State Police Department. During World War II, he was chairman of the Connecticut Salvage Committee, which collected scrap for the war effort. 

In town, Mr. Pierrepont served on the Board of Finance from its establishment in 1921 until 1951, was a president of the Ridgefield Library, chaired the Ridgefield celebration of the Connecticut Tercentenary in 1936, was first president of the Silver Spring Country Club, and was a leader at St. Stephen’s Church.

It was at the church in 1915 that he figured in the resolution of a scandal: Cyrus A. Cornen Jr., the church’s treasurer, had pocketed some $13,000 — equivalent of more than $300,000 today — that was slated to pay contractors on the new St. Stephen’s Church. Pierrepont took over as parish treasurer and raised the money, probably much of his own, to cover the loss.  

Mr. Pierrepont also built what is today called Pierrepont Pond or Pierrepont Lake. He said in a letter to The Ridgefield Press in April 1938 that the lake was created from “an old impassable swamp” in which woods were cleared in 1936 and 1937 by “quite a number of men.” A. Bacchiochi and Sons built the dam, and it took about six months for the pond to fill up. Water went over the spillway for the first time on March 30, 1938.

“We are calling it Lake Naraneka after one of the Indian chiefs who signed the deed to the town of Ridgefield,” Pierrepont said. He never liked its being called Pierrepont.

In 1955, he reported that some years earlier, when he was having a small pond built near his home up on Old Barlow Mountain Road, the gardener came across a spoon-shaped piece of cedar, bearing marks of all the Indian signers of the deed, and probably used by them to drink spring water. This may have been Pierrepont’s inspiration for the name.

Mr. Pierrepont died in 1956 and is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.  He had hoped what’s now Twixt Hills subdivision would be added to the park after his death, but his widow, Nathalie Chauncey Pierrepont, sold the land to developer Jerry Tuccio instead. 

Romeo Petroni, 

The Friendly Judge

For many Ridgefielders, he was the tall, friendly fellow with the big smile who’d stand on the sidewalk in front of the town hall or Squash’s, selling Lions Club raffle tickets or promoting a candidate in the local election. For others throughout Connecticut, he was the distinguished, silver-haired man in black robes who presided over their trial.

After a long life of working and serving in his home town, Romeo Petroni became the first native to serve as a Connecticut Superior Court judge.

“It’s a demanding, challenging position that requires broad knowledge of the law, but at this point in my life, I’m ready for it,” Judge Petroni said in May 1990 when he received the appointment. 

Romeo Geno Petroni was born in Ridgefield in 1929, the son of immigrants from Italy. His father, a laborer, died when Petroni was nine, leaving his mother, Madalena, to bring up him and his sister. Petroni worked hard in school and became president of his Ridgefield High School graduating class in 1946. He went to Syracuse University, graduated from Fordham Law School, and served in the U.S. Army for two years. 

He returned to town in 1957, joining the law practice of  John E. Dowling, a prominent Democrat, as an associate. The same year, Petroni got his first taste of public service  when he became town attorney during the administration of his father-in-law, First Selectman Leo F. Carroll.  

Four years later, running as a Republican, Petroni was elected Ridgefield’s state representative, serving until 1967. 

In 1966, Petroni made an unsuccessful run for Congress, and was always proud of the fact that at a fundraising dinner in his honor, the speaker was Gerald R. Ford, then a congressman and minority leader of the House. Among other GOP notables who campaigned for him was Tricia Nixon, daughter of soon-to-be president Richard M. Nixon. 

His campaign platform included his belief that President Lyndon Johnson should have negotiated with the North Vietnamese leaders to try to end the Vietnam War. ”I think we should see the President personally enter into direct negotiations with the foe rather than have him assign Secretary of State Dean Rusk or Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to do the chore,” he told interviewers from the Danbury News-Times.

From 1971 to 1974, he was a state senator and in 1974 was elected Ridgefield’s probate judge, a position he held for 16 years. 

In 1986, he ran for governor, but failed to get the Republican nomination. Oddly enough, he was nominated to the Superior Court by the man he would have run against, incumbent Democratic Governor William O’Neill. 

Throughout his career in Ridgefield, Petroni was very active in the community, and among other things was chairman of Boy Scout fund drives, a director of the Boys Club and the Village Bank, and a trustee of St. Mary’s Parish. He belonged to the Lions Club, Knights of Columbus, Italian-American Club, and the Ridgefield Volunteer Fire Department. For many of these groups, he provided free legal services.

He received many honors, including Rotary Club Citizen of the Year in 1984 and a Ridgefield Old Timers award, and was listed in “Who’s Who in American Politics” for many years.

Judge Petroni called Ridgefield home for 60 years, but soon after becoming a judge, moved to the New Haven area to be closer to the courts in which he would preside.

He continued to serve as a regular judge until he turned 70 in 1999, when he was named a judge trial referee, a part-time position in which he could be selected to preside over special cases, often involving family disputes and children.

He and his wife, Catherine,  lived in Madison where he died in 2015 at the age of 86.

Petroni was always a strong family man and when local Republicans honored him at a dinner in 1982, he declared, “My good mother, my strong and righteous wife, my daughters — when you honored me tonight, you honored them, and for that I am truly happy and grateful.”

That same dinner, which also served as a GOP fundraiser, was attended by  many Democrats, including Selectman Lillian Moorhead, one of the most dedicated Democrats in town. 

“I just want you all to know how painful it was for me to write out a check to the Republican Town Committee,” she told the gathering about her ticket purchase. “I really can’t think of many people I’d do that for, and Romeo’s one of them.”

Gen. David Perry: 

A Notable Portrait

Brigadier General David Perry is believed to be the only Ridgefield native who rose to the rank of a general in the U.S Army. Consequently, he is probably also the highest-ranking military officer to have been born here.

He was, according to a 1908 Ridgefield Press profile, “best known for his bravery as an Indian fighter, although he had served with distinction in the Civil War.” 

Today, however, he may be better known for a portrait that was painted of him.

Perry was born in Ridgefield on June 11, 1841, a son of Samuel and Sophia Perry, and attended the private school on Main Street operated by the Rev. David H. Short. He enlisted from New Jersey, receiving his commission as a second lieutenant in the 1st Cavalry in March 1862. Three months later he was promoted to first lieutenant, and to captain in November 1864. 

During the Civil War, he fought in many  battles and skirmishes with the Army of the Potomac.

After the war, he spent nearly two decades in the West, fighting American Indians. In 1873, he gained some distinction by capturing Captain Jack and his band of Modoc Indians in California after they had killed Gen. E.R.S. Canby and some peace commissioners. Captain Perry was wounded by the Modocs in one of the engagements. 

Perry fought against the Nez Perce under Chief Joseph in 1877 and in the Bannock campaign in 1878. He was also a commander of Fort Custer in Montana.

He was breveted — promoted — three times due to gallantry in battle, once in the Civil War and twice in the American Indian Wars.

He became a lieutenant colonel of the 10th Cavalry in 1891 and colonel of the all-black 9th Cavalry in 1896. At the time of his retirement in 1904, he was promoted to brigadier general. 

In 1907, Perry had his portrait painted by Robert Henri, a noted American painter and teacher. Henri was a leader of the Ashcan School movement of American realism that portrayed scenes in the daily life, usually of poor people. The portrait of Perry sold at a 1992 auction for $28,600 ($48,000 in today’s dollars) and is now in the collection of the Denver Art Museum.

Perry died in Washington, D.C., in 1908 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. His wife, S. Louise Hoyt, who died in 1938, is buried beside him.

Bernard Perlin

Bernard Perlin: 

Artist Who Witnessed History

Bernard Perlin was a celebrated artist with works in many museum collections and who witnessed one of the major historical events of the 20th century. In Ridgefield, he may have been better know as the man whose bad fortune led to improved emergency services in a large part of town. 

Mr. Perlin was born in 1918 in Richmond, Va., and studied at the New York School of Design, National Academy of Design, and the Art Students League in New York.  Only 21 years old, he was commissioned by the U.S. Treasury Department to do a mural for the South Orange, N. J., Post Office in 1939 and, a year later,  the U.S. Maritime Commission hired him to paint murals aboard the new SS President Hayes, a naval transport ship. 

After designing propaganda posters for the U.S. government during World War II, Mr. Perlin became a war artist-correspondent for Life and Fortune magazines, and was embedded with commando forces in occupied Greece. He later covered the war in the South Pacific and Asia and was aboard the USS Missouri for the official Japanese surrender in September 1945. He stayed on to document the war’s aftermath in Japan and China.

Returning to the United States, Mr. Perlin began a series of “social realist” paintings, recording scenes of life on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He also became a successful illustrator for magazines such as Harper’s, Collier’s, and Fortune well into the 1960s.

Mr. Perlin lived and painted in Italy from 1948 until 1954, aided by a Guggenheim Fellowship. There, he began to move away from social realism to instead paint, in his words, “beautiful pictures,” including landscapes, still lifes, and figures.

He returned to New York to document the “cocktail culture” of the late 1950s, but in reaction to the rise of Abstract Expressionism, he left the New York art scene for Ridgefield in 1959. Here, he continued his work as a figurative painter, and his work became increasingly more abstract.

“People always ask me why my paintings are so different they might have been done by several artists,”  Mr. Perlin said in a Ridgefield Press interview when he was 94 years old. “Well, I’ve gone through many different phases of life — it’s been full of changes, so why would I stick to one technique? Many artists decide on one style and they stick to it. Their paintings all look alike. It’s boring.”

In July 1962, a fire heavily damaged Mr. Perlin’s Ridgebury home and destroyed many valuable paintings. It was the last straw. Because of the distance to the village firehouse, several recent northern Ridgefield fires had had long response times by the fire department. The Perlin fire prompted the Ridgebury Community Association to petition the town and actively campaign for a Ridgebury firehouse. Six years later, the new station opened.

Bernard Perlin’s art is in the collections of many museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Ashmolean Museum;  Detroit Institute of Arts; de Young Museum in San Francisco; Museum of Modern Art; National Academy Museum; National Portrait Gallery;  Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Princeton University Art Museum;  Smithsonian American Art Museum; Tate Modern in London;   and the Whitney Museum of American Art. His work has hung in many private collections including those of Mrs. Vincent Astor, Mr. and Mrs. John Jay Whitney, Mr. and Mrs Leonard Bernstein, Harry Hirshhorn, and Lincoln Kirstein.

He continued to paint until just before his death in 2014 at the age of 95.

“Every painting is like a book,”  he told the Press interviewer. “You write a book about something. And every book is about something different, and has something a different to say. That’s what painting is like.”