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Welcome to Redding
Fairfield County
Connecticut
School Information
Detailed Town Statistics
SummaryTownStatistics
Redding, Connecticut
Redding is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 8,270 at the 2000 census.
History
According to Fairfield county and state records from the time Redding was formed, the original name of the town was Reading. But in 1767, soon after incorporation, the name was changed to its current spelling of Redding. The resulting confusion lasted into the mid 1880's when the U.S. Post Office formalized the name. The first land grant was given to Cyprian Nichols in 1687 and 2 more followed soon after the turn of the century.
Mark Twain Library
Mark Twain, a resident of the town in his old age, contributed the first books for a public library which was eventually named after him. A brief description of how the library started, written by one of the original trustees, Albert Bigelow Paine, is featured on the library's Web site.
"When Mark Twain moved into his new home in Redding he found that he had a great many more books than his library at Stormfield would hold. He proposed that as Redding had no public library he would contribute these books as the nucleus of one. Shelves were put in a little chapel standing on the Umpawaug Road, and the library opened with a small gathering of farmers and summer residents, on which occasion Mark Twain made one of his happy speeches. A year or so later, a more permanent location being desired, Mr. Theodore Adams, an old resident of the "Four Corners," donated a corner lot for the new library building."
"Shortly before Mark Twain's death, he realized a sum of money from the sale of a small farm, left by his daughter Jean, who had died at the end of the previous year. He told me that he would like to build the Redding library with this money as a memorial for Jean, and it was only a few days before his death that he gave me a check for that purpose, naming William E. Hazen, Harry A. Lounsbury and myself as trustees of this fund. This was in April, 1910. The library was ready for occupancy that winter, or early in 1911, and was called the Jean Clemens Memorial Library.
"A sum being needed for current expenses I wrote to Andrew Carnegie, a very old friend of Mark Twain, and asked him if he would like to provide it. His reply was that he would be proud to do this in memory of his friendship with Mark Twain.
"From that day until Mr. Carnegie's death, the library received $500.00 yearly from him. Following his death, the Carnegie Foundation sent a lump sum to provide that amount of income.
"Other contributions have been received and a variety of entertainments have aided in keeping the library open."
Notable residents, past and present
People associated with Redding, listed in area they are most known:
Actors, musicians and entertainers
Leonard Bernstein, composer and conductor, lived on Fox Run Road in the 1950s.Daryl Hall, musician with Hall & Oates, lived on Topstone Road.
Jascha Heifetz, violinist who lived on Sanfordtown Road in the 1940s
Charles Ives, musician
Hope Lange, actress
Barry Levinson, film director, current resident
Meat Loaf (Marvin Lee Aday), rock singer, Joel Barlow High School softball coach while his daughters attended the school during the 1990's
Jessica Tandy, actress, lived with her husband, Hume Cronyn, on Stepney Road in the 1940s and 1950s.
Mary Travers, of the Peter, Paul and Mary group
Authors and other writers
Joel Barlow, poet and diplomat, born in Redding
Howard Fast, auther, lived on Cross Highway in the 1980s.
Jane and Michael Stern of West Redding, write the "Roadfood" column for Gourmet magazine (also authors of Roadfood and other books).
Flannery O'Connor, novelist, wrote Wise Blood while a border at the home ofRobert Fitzgerald and family on Seventy Acre Road (from 1949 to 1951).
Mark Twain lived (on present-day Mark Twain Lane) and owned property in town until his death in 1910 Artists, art experts and critics, cartoonists
Dan Beard, illustrator and one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America, lived on Great Pasture.
People in government and politics
Stuart Chase, economist, philosopher and political activist who worked for Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who took the name of Chase's book, "A New Deal" for his political program), lived on Redding Road from the 1930s to 1980s.
Dick Morris, political consultant and author
Other
Frank M. Hawks, aviator who made the fourth-ever nonstop coast-to-coast flight in the United States in 1929 lived in town
Alfred Winslow Jones, called "the father of the hedge fund industry," lived on Poverty Hollow Road
Lawrence Kudlow, host of Kudlow and Company television program, current resident
Major General Samuel Holden Parsons, commander in the Continental Army under Gen. Israel Putnam, later chief judge of the Northwest Territory, lived on Black Rock Turnpike
Orville Schell, civil Liberties lawyer
Lee MacPhail, former MLB commissioner and Hall of Famer.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “Redding, Connecticut”.
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