‘Now & Then’ is sponsored by Brown Harris Stevens Realtors Joanne Santulli, Karen Ceraso, Bettina Hegel and Schuyler Morris.
Mr. John Patterson, who emigrated from Newton Stewart, Scotland, built the home at the crest of Brushy Ridge in 1880.
Mr. Patterson was a master craftsman in the art of designing and tailoring private livery. At that time, a butler’s, coachman’s or footman’s uniform sometimes cost more than those of the master of the household.
Mr. Patterson founded the house of John Patterson & Co. and erected an impressive building on 33rd street, south of the Waldorf Astoria and also in the 1920s had a shop on Bellevue Avenue in Newport. His successful business prompted him to bring other family members from Scotland to the United States – his relatives the Macnees were northerly neighbors on Brushy Ridge.
His family was one of the first summer residents. The estate consisted of 40 acres and was described in the Advertiser as being a sustenance farm with well cleared acres and stone walls 10 feet wide that were double faced. There are references to the home being called “Creigilea” or “Cragilea” but there was documentation for the name “Pemberly Hill”. The 1880 map refers to Brushy Ridge as also being known as “Benedict Ridge.” Mr. Patterson died on Oct. 11, 1896 and his wife Mary died Aug. 9, 1907.
Mr. Patterson’s youngest son, Alan, was born in New York City on December 15, 1872. Alan graduated from King School and Columbia University. On May 15, 1901 he married Agnes Hoyt and the pair had one son, John. Mr. Alan Patterson founded Troop One of the Boy Scouts of America in New Canaan and was associate scoutmaster in 1914. He was devoted to scouting throughout his life and enjoyed outdoor life. Patterson moved to Nova Scotia in 1915 where he bought land in Shelbourne that he named Sequoia where he built eight unique cabins on the property. He died in May 1946. His son, John, was a staff member at the Boston Museum. In 1913 the 40-acre estate was subdivided into 4 lots. In 1914 Mr. Alan Patterson sold 23.45 acres to Dr. John Elmer Weeks and his wife, Jennie Parker Weeks.
Dr. Weeks was born in Ohio and graduated from the University of Michigan in 1881. Dr. Weeks was associated with the Medical College of New York University and the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary from 1886-1921. He also received a law degree from New York University in 1923. He was the co-discoverer of the Koch-Weeks bacillus which causes acute conjunctivitis. The Weeks had one daughter, Eveline Mount. Dr. Weeks died in La Jolla, California on February 2, 1949.
The Weeks sold the parcel of land to Olive Grant Lilly from Rye, New York on November 22, 1928. At the time the Weeks were listed on the deed as being residents of Portland, Oregon. In 1935, Olive Grant Lilly posted a notice in the Advertiser stating she “will not be responsible hereafter for any bills pertaining in any way whatsoever to my New Canaan, Conn. property…” In 1937 she built a new house at a cost of $24,000 on the southwest corner of Oenoke Avenue and Country Club Road. She sold the Brushy Ridge property to Ms. Ursula Parrott on September 16, 1940.
Ms. Ursula Parrot was born in Boston and was named Catherine [Katherine] Ursula Towle. Her father, Henry Charles Towle, was a doctor, and her mother was Towle’s second wife, Mary Catherine Flusk. Parrott attended Girls’ Latin School in Boston and Radcliffe College earning a degree in English. She moved to Greenwich Village in 1920 and met her first husband, Lindesay Marc Parrott. She married Parrott in 1922 and he was a reporter for the New York Times. Two years later, they had a son named Lindesay Marc Parrott Jr., called Marc. However, Lindesay didn’t want a child and, in one commonly told story, Marc’s existence was kept a secret. According to the tale, it wasn’t until 1924 that Lindesay found out that he was a father. He then denied the existence of the child.
In 1929, Ursula published her first book (a bestseller) “Ex-Wife” which was reprinted in 1988 and 2023. Between 1930 and 1936, she sold the rights to eight novels or stories that were made into films. Ms. Parrot married Charles T. Greenwood, a prominent New York banker, in 1934; John Wildberg, an attorney, in 1937; and Air Force Major Coster Schermerhorn in 1945. It was even rumored that she had an affair with F. Scott Fitzgerald. In December 1942, Parrott made headlines when she was brought up on federal charges of attempting to help jazz guitarist Michael Neely Bryan escape from the Miami Beach Army stockade. She was found innocent at trial. Ms. Parrot died of cancer in the charity ward of a New York hospital in 1957 at the age of 58, but she had sold the Brushy Ridge property to Harriette Templeton Allen Sellwood on Sept. 16, 1948.
Mr. Richard Mathew Sellwood, Hariette’s husband, was born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1901. His father was also named Richard Mathew Sellwood and his mother was Ella Fitzgerald Sellwood. He attended Williams College and Harvard Law School and practiced law in New York City. He was the grandson of Capt. Joseph Sellwood, a pioneer in the mining business and banking in Duluth. Three generations of Sellwoods held substantial interest in the City National Bank, Duluth from 1906 to 1957 when it merged with Northern Minnesota Bank. After Mr. Sellwood’s sister died, he donated his family home to the College of St. Scholastica Duluth and it became a dormitory called Sellwood Hall. The Sellwoods had three children: Carter Elaine Sellwood (1931-2002, Richard Mathew Sellwood (Dick) III (1928-2011) and Joseph Gerald Sellwood (1902-1968). Mr. Richard Sellwood was found guilty of reckless driving with a suspended license on Silvermine Road in 1934. In 1935 Mr. Sellwood and friends refused to pay a tab at the Tavern on the Green citing that it was excessive ($15.30) which ended with an altercation with the staff. Mr. Sellwood was charged with disorderly conduct and simple assault. Ms. Harriette Sellwood had a mortgage on the property dated January 15, 1951. In November 1953 she sold 4.4 acres to James Thrall Soby. Mr. Richard Mathew Sellwood died in 1970. Ms. Harriette Sellwood is also listed as owning another parcel that she sold on Oct. 15, 1962 to Mr. Johnson Lee.
Mr. James Thrall Soby was born on Dec. 14, 1906 in Hartford, Connecticut. His father, Charles Soby was a pioneer of the pay telephone and made a fortune being the largest manufacturer of cigars in the district (6,000,000 were produced annually). Mr. Soby’s mother was Anna Juliet Hazelwood Soby who was born in 1877 and died in 1956. Mr. Charles Soby was born in Suffield, Connecticut in 1854 and died in 1921. Mr. Soby attended the Kingswood School, Taft (Class of 1924) and then Williams College. He left Williams after his sophomore year and “took up a life of independent connoisseurship.” Mr. Soby married three times: in 1927 Elmina Allyn Nettleton Underwood, 1938 he married Eleanor “Nellie” Howland and then married Melissa Wadley. Ms. Wadley was born on March 21, 1911 and had been married to Thomas Southworth Childs in 1937. Mr. Soby had one adopted son named Peter Allyn that he adopted when he was married to Eleanor Howland.
After leaving Williams, Mr. Soby went to Paris where he began collecting contemporary pictures. When he returned home to Connecticut, he became involved with the Wadsworth Atheneum (the oldest museum in America) which was in the vanguard of the modern movement. Mr. Soby collected modern art and began writing articles and books about contemporary artists at that time. In 1935 he gave Alexander Calder one of his earliest commissions for large-scale outdoor work for his home in Farmington, Connecticut. The 23’ standing mobile “Well Sweep” was installed on top of an old well behind the property. When Mr. Soby died, it was given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In November 1940, Mr. Soby was appointed to the Museum of Modern Art’s Acquisitions and Photography committees. He held other positions at the museum throughout his life but his principal role at the Museum was as a Trustee from 1942 to 1979 and advisor to its Committee on the Museum Collections from 1940-1967. He was also the director of over fifteen major exhibitions. In addition, Mr. Soby wrote a monthly art column for The Saturday Review of Literature and was editor of Magazine of Art. He also wrote many books on modern art. In February 1961 a Vogue article entitled: James Thrall Soby: A Venturous Collector of 20th Century Works of Art who lives in a Victorian House” consisted of a five-page article that detailed his collection and his home on Brushy Ridge. In 1962 the property was in the Garden Center Holiday House Tour. Mrs. Harrison DeSilver was the decorating chair. In 1968 a permit for a pool house was issued for an estimated cost of $12,000. The pool house was demolished in 2007. Mr. Soby died on Jan. 29, 1979 at the age of 72. His estate sold the property to Arthur H. Lamborn, Jr. for $320,000 on February 29, 1980.
Mr. “Harry” Lamborn was born in Upper Montclair, N.J. He went to the Canterbury School and then graduated from Williams College in 1951. Mr. Lamborn worked at Hayden Stone before opening his own sugar brokering business as Lamborn & Company. Mr. Lamborn married Virginia (Ginny) Van Blarcum. Ms. Lamborn was born Aug. 14, 1930 in Syracuse. Her father, Clarence C. Van Blarcum, known as “Van”, was a football star and became an executive vice president with McKesson & Robbins. Ms. Blarcum’s mother Ellen was the daughter of the former mayor of Syracuse, Walter R. Stone. She attended Mount Holyoke. The Lamborns were married in 1950 and first lived in Darien, moving to New Canaan in 1964. Ms. Lamborn was employed as a travel agent for New Canaan Travel. She served as a deacon of the Presbyterian Church in New Canaan. Ms. Blarcum moved to Florida where she became a world class angler including being awarded “High Lady Angler”. She died on July 1, 2019.
In October 1985, Hurricane Gloria caused damage to the house when a giant sugar maple took “a bite out of its roof”. Mr. Lamborn later became a vice president of Shearson Lehman Hutton in Greenwich. He died in November 1990. At the time of his death, he was married to Helen Noel Bentley. The Lamborn family sold the property to Edward G. Mellick on Nov. 16, 2000.
Mr. Edward G. Mellick was the son of William Harrison Mellick and Rosalie Mellick King. Mr. William Mellick was born on March 24, 1919 in Detroit and died Feb. 8, 1965 at the age of 45. Ms. King was the daughter of Edward N. Gosselin and the granddaughter of Judge James H. Webb of New Haven. She was a member of the National Society of Colonial Dames of America and graduated from Northwestern. She married Victor H. King who predeceased her. She died on June 9, 2014. Mr. Edward G. Mellick graduated from Dartmouth College in 1967 and American Law School in 1970. In 2001 Mr. Mellick sold the home to its current owners.