Welcome
We are here for you! Please contact us at info@ridgefieldhistoricalsociety.org or 203-438-5821 while our sites remain closed to the public due to the pandemic. In the meantime, this page will continue to be updated with new content every week.
- Connect with us!
- Ridgefield Streams, a new website dedicated to Ridgefield’s incredible arts & cultural organizations
- Our online collections
- And don’t forget to join our mailing list!
- Contact
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If you have questions, email us at info@ridgefieldhistoricalsociety.org or call 203-438-5821.
- Contribute
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We hope you have been enjoying the new and varied content we have been presenting each week!
Please consider supporting us:
- Join as a member
- Renew your membership
- Make a donation
- Stay in Touch Via Postcards and Help the Historical Society
- Volunteer!
Thank you! - COVID-19 Archival Project
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Local residents, parents, and kids can all help us to preserve the history of the current pandemic by sending us photographs, artwork, personal reflections, stories, letters and more. These items, if appropriate, will be stored in our archives and made available to future researchers and visitors to our collection.
Click here to contribute to our COVID-19 Archival project.
You can read more about the project and watch introductory and example videos on the Documenting Ridgefield’s Response to COVID-19 page.
Thanks for visiting our website and staying connected with us and local history.
Local History On Tap: New This Week
Events
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February 5 - March 31, 2021 – All Day
We are pleased to announce the winners of our first annual LEGO® Sculpture Contest. Team Zides, pictured left, took 1st place in the Mixed Age Category for St. Stephen’s Church. All entries will be on view at Ridgefield Town Hall in the front lobby exhibit cases from February 5 through March 31. |
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March 21, 2021 – 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
In this hour-long presentation, Judy Russell will discuss how slavery’s force was felt not only in the south but far north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Slavery persisted in the north until 1804, and many northern states opted for a combination of gradual emancipation and restrictive laws. These Black Laws of the northern states created valuable records for tracing African-American families. |
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April 6 - May 11, 2021 – 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
In this 6-week course we will go through our historical knowledge of major pandemics by consulting first-person accounts, art, archaeological evidence, and groundbreaking scientific research from the dawn of civilization to the present day. This class is appropriate for ages 10+ and adults will enjoy it too! |
Now Online
The Ridgefield Historical Society has selected Heritage Consultants LLC of Newington, whose principals have extensive experience with historical sites in Connecticut, to conduct research into the Battle of Ridgefield under the Society’s National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program (NPS ABPP) grant.
This webinar recording explores the extraordinary cultural phenomenon of home DNA testing, implications for how we think about family and ourselves, and its ramifications for American culture broadly. It draws on Libby Copeland’s years of research for her new book The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are (Abrams, 2020), which The Wall Street Journal calls “a fascinating account of lives dramatically affected by genetic sleuthing.”
Each week, historian Jack Sanders shares bits of over 3,000 entries from his Ridgefield Encyclopedia.
Nugget #49: Carvel Curve
Dr. Darla Shaw portrays one of the town’s very first female entrepreneurs, Jeanne Cook, who moved to Ridgefield in 1970 and ran her own travel business on Main Street for over 25 years.
Recording available now of Jack Sanders’ webinar, The Heroes of Ned’s Mountain. The program starts with an hour-long video presentation and continues with Mr. Sanders answering questions from participants.
Seamstress Audrey Fanning Hawker’s mask project has brightened many Ridgefield faces while making the community safer. It has helped not only those who wear her masks but Ms. Hawker as well.
Kate Mozier-Tichy, a Masters candidate in Information and Library Sciences at Southern CT State University, tells us about King Philip’s War (1675-76).
Scott House Journal, January 2021
Topics: President’s Message; Joe Tulipani’s Memoir of Farm Life; Upcoming Webinars
Join us for a Live Zoom Webinar with Nick Bellantoni, Emeritus Connecticut State Archaeologist, when he will discuss the history, discovery, and excavation of the burials found last December and give an update on the forensic analysis currently underway.
This presentation is taken from the memoirs of Joe Tulipani, who lived with his family on the Keeler Farm on Nod Road in the 1930s.
Find out how the Schoolhouse operated during the fall and winter seasons. Who attended classes, and how was the school heated? Jack Sanders will read the first pages of two 19th Century history books West Lane students might have used, one by Charles A. Goodrich and one by his brother, Samuel G. Goodrich (as Peter Parley), who both attended the one-room school.
Whether you notice it or not, Ridgefield’s history is illuminated by the very buildings that comprise the town. This tour seeks to explore prominent architectural styles in their historical context, as well as to highlight the colorful individuals who built and inhabited these living relics.
Enjoy even more virtual programming from recent weeks! Click a link below.
- LEGO® Sculpture Contest 2020
- Ridgefield and Fairfield County’s Native Populations
- Connecticut Relic Hunters
- Documenting COVID-19
- Inside the Exhibit series:
- Change Agents: Ridgefield Women to Be Remembered
- Tours of the Peter Parley Schoolhouse
- Racism in the 20th Century in Ridgefield
- Uncle Ned’s Mountain: An Underground Railroad Station & Home of Civil War Soldiers
- Historical Nuggets
- Battle of Ridgefield Archaeology Updates
- Scott House Journal, April 2020
- ConnTours
- Oral History Project
- Treasures from the Archives
- Lectures by Terry McManus:
- Ballard Greenhouse
- Anne S. Richardson and her estate and gardens