Message from the Chairman
No doubt much has changed since town fathers made a deal with Chief Catoonah, a sachem of the Ramapoos, to purchase the land that soon became Ridgefield. For the men and women who settled here, those early years were tough. Life expectancy was less than 45 years. There were no cars, no running water, no real understanding of disease—penicillin wouldn’t be discovered for 200 years. Indeed, when Copp and Keeler and Saint John and Olmstead and Rockwell and others established this little town, there was
no America. No plan for it. No thought of it. No notion of declaring independence. We were just a group of people with a weak allegiance and a born indebtedness to a king more than 3,000 miles away.
And so the founders set about laying out the town in an orderly fashion, using Main Street—the center ridge of three main ridges running through the tract of purchased land—as a hub. Soon there were trading posts “downtown.” The Hauley house was built to shelter the first minister. Laws were enacted. Leaders chosen. Traditions planted. This is when our foundation was formed, and where a hardy people began to prosper. The 1800s saw a new texture appear on this foundation—one of elegance and sophistication
and wealth. Tradesmen turned to industry. Town spread out from Main Street like new arteries sending life to a growing organism. As more houses emerged, property boundaries arose in the form of walls made of stones cleared from fields meant for farming. The natural beauty of the town became more apparent as homes became more comfortable and the woodlands and Rolling hills took on an aesthetic rooted in New England Ruggedness.
The next century, the one that ends with the year of celebration in 2008, saw the population explode from fewer than 2,500 people in 1900 to nearly 25,000 by the new millennium. The result was a massive construction boom, an influx of businesses, and continued prosperity. Affluent New Yorkers built private palaces, but the town also became home for suburban professionals—modern families raising kids, making friends, joining the PTA and local baseball leagues. Schools, churches, businesses, and nearly every
institution grew in size, scale, and sophistication.
Over the past 300 years, the look of the town has been greatly transformed but the character of the people has not. There has always been a sense of duty to community: John Copp sidelining his medical duties to help organize the town; Elizabeth Biglow Ballard giving her home and property for a park; Anne Richardson leveraging her wealth to form places for townfolk to play and gather; scores of volunteers today who continue to serve as the underpinning of a healthy town. Since the beginning, Ridgefielders have
always shown signs of industriousness, ingenuity, and old-fashioned gentility—traits that have been handed down by the founders, and rubbed off on so many who’ve lived here.
As time moves along, it brings with it all that is enduring and good and leaves behind the debris of frivolity. We are a town that cherishes history but does not get stuck in it. We hold up our past as something to be remembered, something to learn from, something to be proud of. But we also move on to the next year, the next century continuously improving this place we call home.
- Geoffrey Morris