Town Historian Jack Sanders has transferred the publishing rights for 16 of his books to the Ridgefield Historical Society, ensuring that these works will continue to be available in years to come and providing an income stream to the historical society.
All the books in this gift were originally self-published by Mr. Sanders (Red Petticoat Press) and are the product of his decades of study and research into the history of the town where he has lived for nearly 60 years.
“Jack has given so much to Ridgefield through his writing, research, and love for this community,” said Stephen Bartkus, Executive Director of the Ridgefield Historical Society. “His books reflect a lifetime of curiosity and care, and we feel incredibly fortunate to help carry that work forward. This is a very meaningful gift, and one that will continue to benefit Ridgefield for generations.”
The editor of The Ridgefield Press for 45 years, Mr. Sanders retired in 2014 and immediately plunged into putting into print the Ridgefield stories he’d long been working on, first with several History Press books, and then with his even more Ridgefield-centric topics.
During his newspaper career, he had maintained files for the Ridgefield Encyclopedia, frequently updating information in more than 5,500 entries of people, places and things related to Ridgefield. The most recently published version came out this year, at 623 pages. Another “compendium,” as he calls them, is Ridgefield Names, a history of the town through its more than 1,200 place names. This first appeared in print as columns in The Ridgefield Press. (For many years, based on his extensive knowledge of town place names, Mr. Sanders had been the Planning and Zoning Commission’s “advisor on municipal thoroughfare nomenclature” and was responsible for many road names.)
His Ridgefield’s Great Estates profiles 20 late-19th and 20th Century estates and the people who lived in them, with many color illustrations. Mr. Sanders also brings history to life with A Country Life in Old Ridgebury, an extensively annotated and illustrated diary of Gilbert Burr, a young Ridgefield farmer, for the year 1888.
Uncle Ned’s Mountain covers two centuries of African American farmers, soldiers and the story of an Underground Railroad station in Ridgebury. This 222-page book, with illustrations, brings to light Ridgefield history that few had been aware of.
All of Mr. Sanders’ books will continue to be available at Books on the Common on Main Street and at the Keeler Tavern Museum gift shop, as well as at the Ridgefield Historical Society. For a complete list of Sanders books and other titles that are available through the Ridgefield Historical Society’s gift shop, please visit:
