By Jeffrey Bingham Mead
Thirteen years after the death of Caroline Mills Smith Mead in 1910, Lucien Edwards penned a piece in his column “Greenwich Life As It Is – And Was,” published in the Greenwich News & Graphic.
His readers learned about “the first of Greenwich farming land to be developed into residential sites was owned by a woman who promoted what proved to be one of the most successful real estate operations ever planned for Greenwich.”
That part of the story of Caroline Mills Smith Mead began in 1906 when Suburban Avenue, Tremont Street and Randolph Place and elsewhere in Cos Cob were laid out and lots subdivided.
“Mrs. Mead, who was a tall, slender woman of energy, progressive ideas and unusual executive ability, had an attractive cottage built on a lot on the south side of the Post Road, north of Mead Avenue, to which she moved from the old house which she leased to Mrs. James Beecher, sister-in-law of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, where Mrs. Beecher had a young women’s and girls school where Mrs. Beecher for a number of years.
That “attractive cottage” is the house located between Robertson Way and the Dunkin Shop, today’s headquarters of Greenwich Dentistry at 391 East Putnam Avenue.
The road to Caroline Mead’s success was not an easy one.
She was born in the Roxbury section of Stamford.
Caroline married William H. Mead of Cos Cob on November 19, 1866.
His first wife, Abigail Reynolds, died in November, 1860. There were no children from either marriage. The age difference between William and Caroline was 26 years.
How did they meet? Her brother was George Jackson Smith, who with his wife owned what we know today as Bush-Holley House. Smith and his wife ran the place as a boarding house for railroad construction workers.
William is best known as beginning the subdivision of his farmlands in 1835, creating what we know today as Mead Avenue and the Mead Avenue-River Road Historic District.
He was known as ‘White Oak Bill” after a huge oak tree that once stood in front of the home where Cos Cob School stands today.
This was many years before the founding of the Belle Haven Land Company. Mead Avenue was known as the “Fifth Avenue of Cos Cob.”
William, Caroline’s husband, died on February 29, 1872. Ebenezer Smith, her father, died in August, 1873. I should mention here that there was only an eight-year age-difference between both men.
She was the sole heir to all of William H. Mead’s real estate – which was quite substantial. That includes what we know as Cos Cob Elementary School’s campus, and beyond. She was left with the responsibilities associated with looking after such holdings. There were no children.
Both husband and father were interred in the family cemetery within walking distance from the main farm house.
We know very little about her circumstances or how she kept the house and farm going.
In September, 1884 the Port Chester Journal published news of a public auction of ‘The Great Oak Tree Place, the Property of Mrs. Caroline M. Mead.’
“Twenty-five acres of valuable land, fronting on three streets. Substantial 18 room dwelling house in good order and repair, barn, with cider mill, orchard, etc., in an elegant location on principal thoroughfare of the place, adapted for commodious residence or boarding house, and only five minutes walk from excellent schools, churches, stores, markets and two post offices. A rare chance for a bargain.”
There was an additional 40 acres of woodland north of the farm.
No, the farm did not sell.
Years ago I was going through cemetery records when I noticed a very unusual set of disinterments dated from the 1880s. There were eight altogether, and with each stated in manuscript, from “family plot Cos Cob to Putnam.” I knew that there were earlier burials in the family plot that had been removed.
We never knew why. And, why were the graves of William, his first wife Abigail and Caroline’s father Ebenezer left intact?
When I visited Putnam Cemetery and saw the plot, I also noted three spinsters related to William interred there. Did they have the earliest graves removed? Was there a schism? I’m not sure I’d be surprised.

Mead House
Circumstances greatly improved when Caroline was able to rent out the 18-room Mead farm house to The Beecher Family School for Young Girls for dormitory space and classrooms for about ten years.
The school was operated by members of the famous Beecher family – as in Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
The list of references is impressive. Names include Mrs. Henry Ward Beecher; Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe; Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain); Rev. Yarrington of Christ Episcopal Church, Greenwich, and so on. A brochure for the school is in the Harvard University Library archives, with an electronically scanned version online.
Caroline moved to the house she built for herself aforementioned at 391 East Putnam Avenue, and then commenced the tasks associated with turning her land holdings in Cos Cob into lots with dwelling houses.
Maps and deeds on file in Greenwich Town Hall show she hired S.E. Minor & Co to lay out roads such as Suburban Avenue, Tremont Street and Randolph Place, and probably School Street, too.
The area was named ‘Mead Circle.’
She opened a street some 300 feet or more west of Mead Avenue, extending to Strickland Pond on the south and west, calling it Relay Place, where lots were sold and houses erected.
Across the street from her home between the Post Road what was in early days called the King’s Highway, was a triangular plot extending from Orchard Street to Diamond Hill. This land was divided into small smaller lots and a number of “cottages” were soon built on the lots.
Lucian Edwards wrote that, “Joseph Lockwood, ‘Joe’ they called him, who had become proprietor of the Greenwich drug store, purchased one of these building lots and had a two story frame building put up, the lower part having two stores and the upper part two flats. In one of the stores he opened a drug store, selling it to Dr. Lockwood of Stanwich, who conducted the store for a number of years.”
A grocery business was located in the other store, and there were indications at that time that there would be quite a business section in that vicinity.
Later however, a brick store building and garage were built at “The Hub,” where the retail business of Cos Cob has since continued.
Mrs. Mead opened a street just east of Strickland Brook, from the Post Road north and curving to the road east, where a large number of very desirable building lots, that were easily sold at large prices for that time, were developed.
They were good-sized lots and attractive houses were built, Mrs. Mead always insisting that houses built on the lots she sold should be attractive and a credit to the locality.
She called the section Mead Circle. In recent years Mead Circle which is so desirably situated for cottages in every way, accessible to trolley line, desirable neighborhood and attractive surroundings, has been rapidly “built up.”
Mrs. Mead was actively engaged in the selling of her lots for a number of years, accumulating a considerable fortune in addition to that she had previously processed, from the sale of her lots. She sold her lots on easy terms to desirable purchasers, and offered every inducement to such persons to buy and build houses.
Advancing years and family health compelled her to give up business activities and she retired for a quiet life, always however, seemingly intensely interested when questioned about her real estate operations.
She had a caregiver in her final years – Mary Frances Peck, who was my great grandmother’s sister. Caroline built her a house in 1909, which still stands at 7 Relay Place behind the Mill Pond Shopping Center.
It was in this house that Caroline’s funeral was held. She died on June 3rd, 1910 after an illness whose duration was nearly a year, aged eighty-four years and six months.
The funeral was held at the home. Rev. M. George Thompson of Christ Episcopal Church officiating. Hymns were sung by a quartet consisting of Dr. and Mrs. Carl E. Martin, Arthur H. Dorland and Miss Lillian Reese.
She was a member of the New Canaan chapter of the D.A.R.
Among her bequests in her will was Greenwich Hospital to endow “The William H. Mead Memorial Bed,” and numerous bequests to nieces and nephews.
She is interred in the Mead family plot on the eastern side of Cos Cob Mill Pond. The garden and cemetery are not open to the public. Plans are being developed to welcome public visitors occasionally.
For almost 40 years the cemetery land has been under my direct ownership and care. In 1989, I formed the Historic Mead Family Burying Grounds Association, the first of its kind family cemetery association in Greenwich.
A new, successor organization, Historic Mead Burying Grounds, Inc., has been formed in 2024 to manage the ownership and perpetual care of this plot as well as two other Mead family cemeteries in Greenwich. It also preserves and publishes histories of those interred in these cemeteries as well as those buried elsewhere. meadburyinggrounds.blogspot.
An access way that connects the cemetery to the street has been turned into a perennial pollinator memorial garden. It is dedicated to Caroline Mills Smith Mead as Greenwich’s first woman real estate developer starting in 1906 for her tenacity, vision and patience.
The Historic Mead Family Burying Grounds Association, Inc., announced the establishment of the Caroline Mills Smith Mead Memorial Garden at the Mead Family Cemetery in Cos Cob in 2021.
It was established in conjunction with the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution granting women the right to vote in elections.
While Mrs. Mead was not known to be a suffragist, the garden pays respects to a woman whose business acumen, foresight and philanthropy were well-known throughout Greenwich.
Jeffrey Bingham Mead is a historian and founder of The Historic Mead Family Burying Grounds Association – now Historic Mead Burying Grounds, Inc.
Also from Jeffrey Bingham Mead:
Caroline Mills Smith Mead Memorial Garden, Cos Cob (July 10, 2024)