USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > New Canaan > Landmarks of New Canaan > Part 14
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The original authorized capital was $100,000 with privilege to increase to $200,000, in shares of $50 each.
By 1882, having lived through the financial strain of the Grant administration, they found themselves pressed for working capital. So a most unusual thing requiring special legal ac- tion took place. The town itself voted to invest $25,000 (500 shares of common at $50) and was authorized by the legislature to do so and to lay a tax if necessary to raise the funds. Noah W. Hoyt was appointed to transact the busi- ness and Lucius M. Monroe to vote the shares at directors' meetings.
They went even further to relieve the strain. They appealed to the legislature to suspend their taxes and rebate those taxes in arrears to
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00436
The Station When Parking Was No Problem
date which was April, 1883. This was granted.
At this time they petitioned for articles of reorganization which the legislature granted in a long document. It authorized the execu- tion of a mortgage and issue of new stock at $100 per share. But, they were restricted to six and one-quarter cents per mile. In March, 1882, the New Canaan Messenger printed a statement of freight and passenger traffic and earnings for the decade ending in 1881. It shows an average of about 5,000 tons of freight grossing about $5,000 and 35,000 fares grossing about $10,000. Quoting from the Railroad Commissoner's report, it appears that the per- centage of "gross earnings to capital and debt" was 5.40, the lowest in the state, high being the Hartford and Connecticut Western with 44.93. Despite this rather doubtful report, the Mes- senger observed that "the year 1878 was the turning point and things are now looking better."
Brevity requires omission of the years of
picturesque (from today's viewpoint) comment and controversy about the road appearing in the Messenger. The full story of the New Ca- naan Railroad is a long one and worthy of some patient research and telling. It was truly a "noble experiment," and, even though it was not profitable, we wonder when if ever, the New Haven Railroad would have built a line here.
On October 12, 1883, the "Consolidated Road" bought the entire equity of the local company which was represented by the bonds only ($100,000). It took over at once and with its great resources, inaugurated a much im- proved train schedule, equipment and man- agement.
Nothing remains of that episode in our in- dustrial history save buried strata of the orig- inal roadbed and the old station. We might well cherish a sentiment for the modest little brown bump-we owe a debt to its founders.
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Еслича Евичман 1947.
THE KEELER- MASON WADSWORTH HOUSE
FRANCES SEVERANCE and JOHN G. PENNYPACKER, Authors
EDWIN EBERMAN, Artist
[ August 14, 1947]
When Mrs. Stephen E. Keeler moved in 1927 from her home on Smith Ridge to a new home in the village, it marked the end of 206 years
of occupancy of this property by the Keelers- a family which had made a unique contribu- tion to the life of the Smith Ridge community,
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as well as having been the first family to settle on the Ridge and, of the original settler fami- lies, the last to leave.
The first settler here was Daniel Keeler, a grandson of a Norwalk settler of 1655 and a nephew of a veteran of the Great Swamp fight, during the Indian uprising known as King Phillip's War. In 1721 he bought for £40 a half interest in a sixty acre tract on the east side of Smith Ridge, both north and south of what is now Michigan Road. When the tract was "arti- ficially surveyed" and divided, Keeler took the more desirable southerly portion. Later acqui- sitions brought his holdings up to about a hun- dred acres, mostly to the east of the present Smith Ridge Road, including the Hawkins property on the north and running south to approximately the Clausen-Olmsted line.
The original Keeler house was a little to the southwest of the present house (on what is now the south end of North Wilton Road) and was probably built when Daniel married Han- nah Whitney in 1730. They were two of the twenty-four founders of the Society of Canaan Parish in 1733.
Daniel was a tanner, shoemaker and weaver, as well as a farmer, and he ultimately had five sons and six daughters to help him carry on. When he died in 1765 and left his estate to his wife and children, part of the farm had to be sold to cover cash bequests and the rest was split among five different owners. Daniel's son, Jeremiah, also a farmer and shoemaker, carried on for a time on a fraction of the farm but finally sold out to his nephew, Isaac Keeler, who laboriously reacquired other pieces of family land until, in 1798, he had reassembled most of Daniel Keeler's original farm, except for most of the present Hawkin's property, which had been sold to James Richards, Jr.
Isaac's wife, Catherine Tuttle, outlived him by many years and was fondly known as "Grandmother Kate." During her time the old house burned down. It was Sunday and she had gone to church in the oxcart. On the way home, she met James Richards and two other neighbors with buckets, who told her the house had burned to the ground in spite of the best they could do. Said she, "Well, I hope you men
had the sense to save my mincemeat." Nothing daunted, she and her sons set about the build- ing of a new and larger house which, if stand- ing today, would be in front of the present house between the two large maples.
Grandmother Kate was an Episcopalian and in 1837 she presided at the first meeting of the Ladies' Sewing Society of St. Mark's Church, a society that is still in active existence today.
It was Stephen Edward Keeler, one of Isaac's three sons-and the first of five of that name so far-who carried on with the old farm. In 1846 he married Ann Augusta Raymond, whose mother was an Abbott and who had been born in the old Abbott house, a quarter of a mile or so up the Ridge. The Smith Ridge of those days was very much of a community of its own. The Smith Ridge Road then ran straight north over what is now the south end of the North Wilton Road, past the Keeler house, to what is now the east end of Michigan Road. There it turned west for a hundred yards or so and then north again. On this hun- dred yard jog through old Keeler land the Bou- tons and Irelands now live and next to the Ire- lands a vacant house stands belonging to their near neighbor, Mrs. Harold Schofield, who is a granddaughter of Stephen and Ann Augusta Keeler. In the middle and later eighteen hun- dreds, this short bit of road was the community center, with store, post office, blacksmith shop, carriage shop and cobbler shop. The district school was just a short way north on the North Wilton Road, the old school on the west side and later a new school on the east side. It was not until the days of automobiles that these two right angle turns caused any trouble, but a series of accidents finally brought about the building in 1931 of the present concrete-paved causeway, which eliminated these corners and filled in a large part of the Kecler duck pond.
Stephen and Ann Augusta Keeler raised a substantial family and built the present house. Smith Ridge held its "sociables" either at the school house or at the roomy Keeler home. The farm, now conditioned by three generations of pioneer clearing and plowing, produced pay crops of hay, grain, lumber, pork, poultry and apples, while the spinning wheel and loom pro-
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duced linens-sheets, tablecloths, coverlets, etc .- for the family use.
Stephen Keeler was a leader in the com- munity life and was both active and effective in matters concerning the District School; it was during his chairmanship of the School Committee that the new schoolhouse was built in 1874, after years of obstruction and procras- tination. His wife was a fine and vigorous woman with an equally vigorous temper but with great breadth of sympathy. She, like "Grandmother Kate" before her, outlived her husband-to live, altogether, sixty-three years on the farm-and became "Grandma" Keeler and a legendary figure on the Ridge.
It is said that nobody ever left her door hungry and, long after her neighbors "allowed they ain't been a tramp along in quite a spell," she failed to note any change. One morning after having fed two, a company of four ap- peared together and made it known that they expected breakfast. She felt a bit imposed upon and told them she had cleared breakfast away and the men had all gone to work long ago. Whereupon, sensing her defenselessness, they became insolent and ordered her to go in and get them breakfast. "All right," said she, "you wait here and I'll fetch it to you." Going into the house, she got Stephen's gun and, with the stock firmly set against her shoulder she kicked open the door and, peering down over the sights at her guests, said, "Now, gentlemen, your breakfast is ready, which one shall I serve first?"
Once a nearby family with little or nothing to do with were discovered by her watchful eye at the moment of a new arrival. She rushed home and summoned "the help" into the house and directed them to, "Take down that stove- pipe and be lively about it." "But," they pro- tested, "there's a fire in it." "Well," said she, "don't you suppose I know it? What good is a stove without fire in it? Take it down and then get some gunny sacs and lift the stove into the wagon, fire and all, and take it over there and set it up and I'll be there to see that you do it. I'm fetchin' a pail of hot water and mind you I want a hot stove to set it on when I get there."
When her grandson, the present Bishop
Keeler (Stephen E., 4th, Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota) was a small boy on the Keeler farm, he and several others were playing near the duck pond (now just the swamp spot in the fork of Smith Ridge and North Wilton Road). Grandma Keeler was sitting on the porch, peacefully peeling potatoes, when ex- cited shrieks rose from the pond. She dropped the potatoes and with her voluminous skirts gathered in one hand and the light of battle in her eye she flew down the hill to the pond.
As she had suspected, a snapping turtle was dragging one of her ducks under water. In- stantly Grandma Keeler snatched the rapidly vanishing duck and with the astonished turtle still clinging to it she sped up the hill, followed by a delighted procession of small boys. With a quick stroke of the axe she ended the turtle's career and the Keeler family dined happily on turtle stew and roast duck.
In 1884, six years after his father's death, their youngest son, Stephen Edward, Jr., mar- ried and he and his family and Grandma Keeler carried on the farm.
In the early 1900's it was the custom for the city dwellers to board at farms during the summer. The Keeler farm was all but preemi- nent in this field for many years. Among the people who enjoyed its hospitality were two families who later became permanent residents on the Ridge, Mr. and Mrs. H. B. Clark and Donald Crane. Mr. Crane reports that when he was a boy one of the great treats on the Keeler farm was to be allowed to ride to Stam- ford with Mr. Keeler, when he drove the big farm wagon to market with the vegetables. Bishop Keeler, who was in school and college in those days, worked on the place in the sum- mers. Mr. Crane later bought and built on the south end of the old farm (the present Olm- sted house), selling the land on his north to Mr. Doty. In 1927 the farmhouse and the re- mainder of the farm were sold to the Mason Wadsworths and the last of the settler-family names followed Smith, Benedict, Ruscoe, Richards, Comstock and Abbott in disappear- ing from the Ridge.
The Wadsworths were proof of how satisfac- tory in both personality and character the sub-
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stitution of new for old could be. They both had a gift for friendship and over the years accumulated an unusually wide circle of friends throughout the town. For years before the days of annual fireworks displays at the Country Club, the Fourth of July fireworks party on the ample ridgetop behind the Wads- worth house was one of the events of the neigh- borhood. Mrs. Wadsworth, more widely known in her professional capacity as Dr. Ruth Wads- worth, is a graduate of Cornell Medical School and developed a large medical practice; in the period before the town was so well supplied
with physicians she carried a tremendous load and again during World War II, when so many of the younger men were in service.
After a number of years of ill health, Mason Wadsworth died last June and Dr. Wadsworth, whose practice has for some time required her to maintain a second home in the village, is spending more and more of her time there. In spite of their absence, the old house will long be associated with the Wadsworths in the minds of at least the newcomers of the past twenty years or so.
THE ST. JOHN-ASHWELL HOUSE
V. ALLEN HOWER, Author
EDWIN EBERMAN, Artist
[August 21, 1947]
The date of the St. John-Aswell House at 49 Park Street is not entirely clear. Some have placed it in 1731 when John Betts acquired the land. Others have dated it after 1742 by referring to it as the "Jonathan Huested House," for Huested did not buy the property until that year. However, the copies of the land records in the files of the Historical Society are fairly definite on the subject. Henry Inman bought two acres of land from John Betts in 1741 for £28. There is no mention of a house and the price confirms that there was none. However, in 1742, when Inman sold the prop- erty to Jonathan Huested, the records mention "dwelling house and shop." Therefore, the house must have been built in 1741 or 1742.
The next owner of the property after Hue- sted was Lieutenant David St. John who bought the two acres with "dwelling house, barn and fruit trees" for £300. This member of the illustrious St. John family and his descen-
dants owned the house thereafter continuously until 1919 when it was sold to Helen M. Ash- well (Mrs. T. W. Ashwell), the present owner.
The house itself seems little changed from its original construction. There were four rooms on the ground floor built around the central chimney with its three large stone fire- places. The two rooms on the street side have been combined into the present living room and the kitchen on the southeast is now the library. The present entrance on Park Street is new. Originally the main entrance was the onc at the north end of the house where there is a small hall which gives access to the stairway and to the living and dining rooms. The only addition to the house which appears to be of fairly recent date is the extension at the back, which is the present kitchen and pantry. There is an old covered well, visible from the street to the south of the house. The garden back of the house contains a box hedge, well over 100
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50
Edwin Elerinian
The St. John-Ashwell House
years old, in good condition. In this garden, scarcely visible through the hedge from the street, one finds quiet and almost complete seclusion from the activity of the nearby Rail- road Avenue (now called Elm Street) and rail- way station.
Close by in 1731, was erected the first Ca- naan Parish Meeting House. Later there is mention of a store next door. Lieutenant David St. John, who, as mentioned above bought the house in 1764, was born in 1735 and was great,
great grandson of Matthias St. John who came from England in 1631, settling in Dorchester, Mass. David was not a farmer as were most of the Town residents of his time, but was sur- veyor of highways at age 16 and thereafter at various times was a captain, selectman, lister, sealer of weights and measures and member of a committee of inspection to buy clothing for soldiers during the Revolutionary War. His own war career was short. Early in 1777 he was commissioned First Lieutenant, but he re-
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signed in 1778 at age 43. Throughout his life- time he added to his land holdings, and, no doubt, like most of his contemporaries was land poor.
The Rev. William Drummond, author of the "Journal of Family Visitations," tells of dining with David St. John on April 28, 1772, and of his visit on January 18, 1773. On the latter date he lists the members of the family, including Hezekiah, a residenter, son of David's brother, Benjamin.
After David's death in 1796 the house ap- parently passed to his son, Samuel, who lived from 1772 to 1825, for the record shows that Samuel's son, Samuel, who became famous as a scientist and professor, was born there in 1813. The illustrious professor did not spend his adult years in this house but built a large new home and observatory across the street. There he collected the historical records and docu- ments which served him so well in his Centen- nial Address on July 4, 1876. He was one of New Canaan's most famous residents-a scien- tist of world fame. He died within a few months after giving his address in 1876, and shortly thereafter his house with many of its invalu- able records was destroyed by fire.
Professor Samuel St. John's sister, Hannah, married the Congregational minister, Rev. Theophilus Smith in 1831 and they lived in the
St. John-Ashwell house until their deaths in 1854 and 1853 respectively. Rev. Theophilus Smith was pastor from 1831 until his death and was a prominent person of his time. He was the designer of the present Congregational Church.
Ownership of the house then apparently passed to Arthur Smith, son of Rev. Theophilus Smith and Hannah St. John Smith, for the next official record is in 1867 when, after Arthur's death, "in debt," the property was sold for $1,062.55 to William St. John by Samuel St. John, Executor.
From 1867 the ownership of the house is fairly clear although the occupancy is not. Wil- liam St. John died in 1884 leaving the house and its two acres to his niece Eliza and nephew Samuel. This Samuel was an eye specialist of considerable reputation as distinguished from Professor Samuel St. John, his grandfather, and Dr. Samuel St. John, his father. He died in 1910, and apparently his interest in the prop- erty passed to his sister, Eliza St. John. At the death of Eliza in 1916 the property passed to Elsa St. John Frisbee, daughter of Dr. Samuel, eye specialist, who sold it to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Ashwell, the present owners. Mr. and Mrs. Ashwell moved to New Canaan from New York in 1919 and their three children have grown up in this charming old house.
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THE NEW CANAAN DRUG STORE
H. MONROE HUMASON, Author
EDWIN EBERMAN, Artist
[August 28, 1947]
The above title, as of 1947, is something of a misnomer because New Canaan now has sev- eral drug stores. This is the story of the first one. Today it is known as Cody's but for more
than half a century its name was "The New Canaan Drug Store," and it was long New Ca- naan's only drug store. It is certainly one of the oldest in the state for it has passed the hundred
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JAMES J. CODY EST. DRUGGIST 1854
.......
1. Edwin Eberman 1947
The New Canaan Drug Store
year mark. Mr. Cody's sign says "Est. 1854," but the business is really older than that.
It was in 1845 that Samuel C. Silliman, jr., purchased a piece of land from Sereno Ogden, erected a story and a half building, and opened a drug store. That building was located at present 94 Main Street, and in that building the drug store has been in operation ever since.
In 1854 the business was purchased by Lucius M. Monroe, and the following year he took title to the property. The new owner added another story to the building to provide living quarters on the upper floors. It was Mon- roe's residence for the remainder of his life, and is still so used by the present owner.
Monroe, a native of New Canaan, was born
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on his father's farm on Brushy Ridge, and was descended from several of the earliest settlers of New Canaan's parent, Norwalk, including David Monroe, Thomas Benedict, John Greg- ory and Walter Hoyt.
In 1889 Lucius Monroe entered into a part- nership with his son of the same name. The latter had grown up with the business and had been graduated from Columbia School of Phar- macy. So in 1889 the store officially acquired that double name so well known for many years:
THE NEW CANAAN DRUG STORE L. M. Monroe, Sr. and Jr.
After the death of Monroe, jr., in 1918, the store was sold to James J. Cody, the present owner-the business in 1919 and the building in 1921. Mr. Cody's part in the history of the store is by no means limited to the period of his ownership. His association with the business goes back something like 60 years. It was as a boy in his teens that he went to work for Monroe, and he has played a major role in the growth of the store.
A photograph presumably taken in the 70's shows that there has been no great change in the outer appearance of the building, except for an enlargement of the show windows in 1893. In the rear, however, much change has taken place in the course of time. Up to the turn of the century the place was a country residence. Adjacent to the kitchen wing was a yard, with a carriage block for the ladies of the family. Back of that was a large, dome-shaped conservatory which was considered very ele- gant indeed. Traces of it still remain, but it has long since been overgrown, its glass demol- ished, by a huge wisteria. Back of the conserva- tory were wagon sheds and a barn. Finally, there was a vegetable garden running back to what is now the town's parking lot.
The carriage block could be approached from the upper floors by a central stairway that wound around a well shaft. Judging from the fascination it afforded visitors, a well inside a house must have been something of a nov-
elty. And it must have been something of a well. It was older than the house itself. In the deed from Ogden to Silliman, reservation is made for "usc of the well by one family." As the well was there and could not be moved, they just built the house around it.
Inside, the principal change in the main part of the store is that the soda fountain is not the original nor is it in the original location. There is no record of when the black walnut store fixtures, still in use, were installed, but they undoubtedly go back at least 75 ycars. The "label bottles" on the south shelves presumably date to the original Silliman store, as experts say that bottles of this type were not made after 1850.
These bottles, in their day, have held a re- markable pharmacopoeia; a collection that en- joyed a wide reputation. As drugs in many drug stores became more and more displaced by banana splits and egg sandwiches, a phar- macist would discover that some prescription ingredient was missing from his own inventory. So messengers would come to the New Canaan Drug Store-often from as far as New York- confident that any drug in the book could be found in those bottles.
The bottles and the drawers beneath held items other than rare drugs. There was always a bottle of rock candy; a supply of licorice root and slipp'ry ellum; and other items which may or may not have had medicinal value but were highly prized, particularly by the young.
And there were mystery items, also. Every now and then some lady customer would come in and demand the proprietor-no ordinary clerk would do. A package would be wrapped up back of the counter, and the lady customer would go out. Slink out might be a better term. Subsequent investigation by a curious clerk solved that mystery. The hush-hush item was rouge.
Occasionally, too, cigarettes had to be pur- veyed in secret. These were kept in stock large- ly for the visiting trade. Except for a few ad- dicts of Sweet Caporals, New Canaan's males ran more to cigars, pipes and cating tobacco. John Pennypacker, in a Historical Society paper of a few years ago, mentioncd the
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daughter of a Smith Ridge family of around 1900 who, gossip said, "indulged in tobacco." She did. Nearly every morning in the summer she would drive her father to the station, and on the way back would stop in front of the drug store. This was the cue for someone to smuggle out two packs of Turkish Trophies. If it happened to be the soda boy, he sometimes got a dime to keep his mouth shut.
Another interesting and ancient item in the store is the set of large colored globes in the show windows. Such globes were once almost the standard sign of a drug store, but this set must be almost the last of its kind.
A unique decorative feature of the old store was a collection of stuffed birds mounted in glass cases. These supposedly contained an ex- ample of every song bird known to the New Canaan area, and always attracted much at- tention. After the death of the Monroes, the collection was presented to the Library. It was later transferred to the Bird Sanctuary.
Lucius Monroe was a young man of 29 when he acquired the drug store. A few years earlier a doctor had advised him that he had less than a year to live. But he was destined to remain in the drug business for the next 62 years. He died in 1916 in his 91st year. It is certain that this flouting of medical prognostication did not result from taking remedies from his own stock in trade. Monroe was a strange druggist. He viewed all drugs with scorn, and anything be- yond bicarbonate of soda he considered almost dangerous. He would say to a customer seeking a remedy for whatever ailed him: "The best thing for you to do is to take nothing at all, but if you insist on something, then I would rec- ommend so and so." Monroe's personal panacea for all ills from a stomach ache to a broken leg was no food for 24 hours and a thimbleful of brandy.
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