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Digging The Roots In Scotts Corners

POUND RIDGE, N.Y. – After living in California for 35 years, John Cody has come home and has brought along some memories of the early days in Pound Ridge.

John Scott was photographed with his oxen on his Pound Ridge farm.

John Scott was photographed with his oxen on his Pound Ridge farm.

Photo Credit: John J. Cody
John Scott (1827-1910) and Angeline Scott (1834-1925) were photographed at their home on Pound Ridge's Trinity Pass Road.

John Scott (1827-1910) and Angeline Scott (1834-1925) were photographed at their home on Pound Ridge's Trinity Pass Road.

Photo Credit: John J. Cody

“There were four Scott brothers living on DeKalb Avenue in Brooklyn,” he said during a talk delivered to the Pound Ridge Business Association. “And they decided to come north and become farmers.” This was in the mid-nineteenth century.

“My great-great-grandfather, John Scott, took the land on the south side of Westchester Avenue. His farm ran from the Connecticut border to about 300 yards past [today’s] Pound Ridge firehouse. He had cows, oxen, pigs, chickens and firewood. He and his wife, Angeline Austin Scott, lived at 9 Trinity Pass Road." The greatly renovated building still stands today.

“Two other brothers, Gould and Charles, had their farms on the opposite side of Westchester Avenue," Cody continued. "So that’s how Scotts Corners got its name. The fourth brother, Irving, wasn’t a farmer.”

Most of the Scott family oral history came from Cody’s grandfather, also named John Cody. “There was a lot of intermarriage between the Scotts of Pound Ridge and the Codys of New Canaan,” the current John Cody continued. “John and Angeline’s daughter, Bessie, married William Cody. The Codys had a pharmacy in New Canaan.

“Their son, John William Cody, was my grandfather. My father was Edward James Cody.”

He remembers going to the drugstore after school as a child. “It was before they widened Main Street. In those days, people would go to the pharmacy instead of going to the doctor. It was a real hangout, the center of the news and politics.”

“When my parents were dating back in the ‘30s they used to go visit George Nelson Selleck. He had a basket shop and he lived upstairs. But he was a hermit. He’d lower a basket and my folks would put food in it for him.”

“The Sellecks were an important family,” said Cody. “They built the Danntown Chapel with a beautiful organ.” 

Cody says he is related to almost everybody in the old “Selleck’s Cemetery” on Barnegat Road, just across today’s Connecticut border. “It’s one big happy family in there.

“The Sellecks, the Scofields, the Scotts, the Codys, the Danns, and the Austins.” Cody’s great grandmother, Angeline, was one of the Ridgefield Austins. “She had six or seven brothers and sisters but they all died at an early age. She lived to be around around 90.”

“My father and my brother are buried there,” said Cody. “There’s one headstone for a woman born in 1875, but there’s no date of death, so I guess she’s still with us.”

Update: The Danntown Chapel was rebuilt and is now known as Sellecks Corners Chapel.

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