Aspinock Memories
Who was Phineas Gardner Wright?
By Terri Pearsall, AHS Museum Curator
Have you ever walked through a cemetery looking at the gravestone wondering about the story of each life the stone represents? Well, if you walk through the Grove Street Cemetery about midway near Killingly Avenue, you will find large square granite tombstone with a hand-carved raised portrait of a gentleman with a well-groomed beard. It is the tombstone of Phineas Gardner Wright. Looking at the tombstone, you might think that Phineas was an aristocrat and lived a privileged life of comfort and style. The story of his life is nothing that you would imagine based on this tombstone.
Phineas Gardner Wright was born on April 3, 1829, in Fitzwilliam, a small town in Massachusetts. When he was 2 years old, his father moved the family to a farm in North Woodstock. He grew up working long hours on that family farm. When Phineas was a teenager, his father went to California to find gold hoping to provide a better life for his family. He never reached the gold fields. He died on Oct. 6, 1849.
Suddenly “Guard” as he was called (his middle name) found himself head of the house along with his older brother. Guard fulfilled his father’s wishes for his remains being brought back to his Connecticut and laid away in the burial ground there though it required a sacrifice of time and money. He regarded it as a sacred duty and gladly carried it out. His father now rests in the family plot in the Grove Street Cemetery.
Guard and his two brothers, two sisters and his mother struggled with meager funds to live on. In their struggle there was a shared closeness. The family lived in Woodstock until 1855. After his sister Betsy married her husband, Abner Lee, they lived with Guard, their mother, two brothers and two sisters. Betsy had four children in four years, and the extended family had outgrown the house. So, the Lees moved to Thompson. At about the same time one brother moved to Niantic, Guard, his mother and youngest sister Sarah moved to Putnam. Guard saw a fast-expanding city with plenty of business opportunities. They went to live in a large house on a high hill on School Street overlooking the railroad tracks, the Catholic Church steeple and the monstrous cotton mills and shoe factory.
July 1857 Guard’s sister, 22-year-old Sarah, died of typhoid fever. Betsy’s husband, Abner, was inducted by draft into the army for the Civil War and was captured and died while in Andersonville prison. She moved back to Putnam to find work. Her youngest child, Hattie, died in 1872 of scarlet fever when she was only 9. Their mother, Betsy, died in 1875. Guard inherited his mother’s home and opened the house to his sister and what was left of her family. This family was struck by every disease that came into Putnam and several tragedies.
Guard inherited a ready-made family dependent upon him for their welfare and guidance. He never married and had no time or need to establish a family of his own. He decided to make and accumulate a fortune. He saw the need for laborers in the building of mills and business blocks in the works for Putnam. Guard became a labor contractor and furnished workers for city projects. He amassed a small fortune and became an extensive property holder. According to the Business Directory of Putnam, 1873, he is listed as “Wright, P.G. real estate dealer – H.N. School St.” When the Midland division of the New Haven railroad was put through in 1863, Guard had charge of a gang on men working on the project.
He never put his money in the banks in Putnam not wanting them to know of his assets. Every few weeks he would travel by horse and buggy into Boston to deposit his funds at a bank “he could trust.” He went to Boston dressed in his usual overalls and work shirt ---the generally unkempt appearance known to all Putnam. During warm months he even went barefoot with a dusty old straw hat perched on his head. While in Boston, he went for dinner at the world-famous elite Parker House dressed in his usual attire. This was totally unacceptable and as he strolled in and seated himself at one of the better tables, the maître d’ approached him and informed him that he could not be served while dressed in his present attire. Guard became furious and uttered amidst a barrage of cuss words that his “money was as good as anyone else’s and maybe even better!” The maître d’ held firm and Guard calmly and quietly rose up from his chair and with one jerk pulled the white linen tablecloth; dishes, silverware, flowers and all crashed to the floor. He grabbed his old straw hat from the back of his chair, put it on his head and left. The maître d’ was left in a state of shock along with the other patrons. Guard was not known for his good manners.
He loved telling stories, such as the Parker House story, in a humorous and interesting manner in the office of the Putnam Inn drawing a group of men, young and old, who delighted in his stories. He made appearances at town meetings and was not afraid to voice his opinions regardless of the moderator’s call to order. He wasn’t concerned about impressing anyone and was content to drive about with a little old horse and an older wagon. He was often spotted driving around, stopping every so often to pick up old, discarded newspapers and rugs which he sold to a shoddy mill in Quaddic. He saw the monetary value in everything that could be salvaged.
Twelve years before his death, Phineas Gardner Wright was heralded from Maine to California. He had gained countrywide notoriety by erecting upon his Grove Street cemetery plot a monument to the cost of $1500. When it was uncovered, he was not prepared for the sculptor’s artistic touch in making part in the middle of his flowing whiskers (the parted beard was new in fashion). He was very displeased with this as it was not true to life and because he dreamed that he could not enter heaven with his beard parted on the bust, he ordered the monument removed, taken back to Worcester where it came from and done over again without the “part”. It was brought back and replaced with an un-parted beard.
Within a few days of its unveiling, newspaper men from all parts of the country, camera fiends, tourists and other curious people came from miles around to see the monument and to interview the man who had it installed. The Wright home was besieged by people, letters, and postcards from all over the country asking for autographs. The quiet cemetery was broken by the tramping of many feet as folks filed in and out to see if the monument was really there.
In his usual shocking manner, Guard said that he had caused several bottles of spirits to be planted there so the grave digger might not go dry while preparing his last resting place. Although he denied this several years later, the legend lives on to this day. Guard liked to say that more people visited his monument each year than those who called on the President of the United States. Had the monument in Grove Street Cemetery given Guard Wright the notoriety he perhaps was searching for? No one knows for sure. He died May 2, 1918. He began life poor but amassed a fortune of $125,000 which he invested mostly in real estate and mortgages. In his will he left his fortune to Miss Hattie Crane who did his housework and cared for him later in his life, except for $2000 left to Putnam Hospital.
So, the next time you happen to be in a cemetery, notice that each monument has a birthdate, a dash and a date of death. That dash represents an entire lifetime of memories; births, deaths, marriages, happiness and tragedies. How we live our lives is reduced to a dash buried forever except for the memories left behind.
Information in this article was provided from the archives of Aspinock Historical Society, a book written by Ruth H. Flagg (Phineas Gardner Wright) The Man and his Monument and articles from the Putnam Patriot.
Aspinock Memories graces the pages of the Putnam Town Crier to keep Putnam's history alive.