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A Brief |
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The
Fundamental Orders adopted by Connecticut in 1639 directed would-be settlers,
able to support a minister, to establish a settlement, build a Congregational
church and farm the
land. This is exactly what was done here in 1708. The original 24 proprietors
received 7˝ acre home lots drawn by lottery, with a 25th reserved for the minister. The lots were
located up and down Main Street from a Common where a Meeting House was built. A
close knit community of neighbors lived under the vigilant eye of minister
Thomas Hauley, who also served as school master and town clerk. Each family was
an individual survival unit, dwelling in a small home, farming its outlying
fields and husbanding a few farm animals on its home lot.
One of the earliest entrepreneurs was Timothy Keeler, who had converted his home, now the Keeler Tavern Museum, into a tavern in 1772. (It was fired upon by the British during the Battle of Ridgefield, April 27, 1777.) After the Revolutionary War Timothy Keeler began to import goods from New York to resell in his tavern—everything from buttons to rum—and in 1783 Lt. Joshua King established the King and Dole store in a small building now grown into the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art.The
pace of commerce grew thereafter. By 1822 the town had hatters,
tailors, weavers, carpenters, silversmiths and 40 shoemakers. The 19th century
also saw the birth of industry, beginning with carriage manufacturing. By 1830
the Resseguie and Olmstead carriage “manufactory,” called the Big Shop, had
become a local landmark on the present site of the Congregational Church. Other
19th century manufacturers on south Main made candlesticks, furniture and
shirts. As they flourished, the owners began to enlarge their homes or build new
ones and by 1850 the face of Main Street had begun to change.
Because
Ridgefield lacked significant water power and was located off the main travel
routes, it was unable to compete in the Industrial Revolution. The town lost
population as its mills and shops closed. What kept Ridgefield alive after the
Civil War was the arrival of prominent New Yorkers eager to summer in this
quaint resort with its healthy air. By 1870 a new railroad spur began bringing
these summer visitors to south Main’s Bailey Inn, Three Pines Boarding House,
Ridgefield Inn and Keeler Tavern (now the Ressiguie Hotel). This fashionable
crowd soon began to build mansion-sized vacation retreats on south Main Street
and elsewhere in town.
By 1890 the Common and the old Congregational Church were gone, but very little else had changed since earlier in the century. In 1966 the area was designated a state and local Historic District and in 1984 a National Historic District. It is administered by the Ridgefield Historic District Commission.Return to the Ridgefield Historical Society Home Page |
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