Old Gard Wright

PHINEAS GARDNER WRIGHT was the kind of harmless eccentric who used to be as much a part of the New England scene as stones in the pastures. "Old Gard," as he was always called by his fellow townspeople, was born in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, in 1829, but his family moved to Putnam when he was still a child, and he spent the rest of his life in that northeastern Connecticut town, much to the frequent amusement and occasional amazement of its citizens. When he died in 1918, he was buried beneath a distinctive granite marker which he designed himself, in a grave specially created to his specifications.
The Wright gravestone features not only an impressive bas-relief bust of the deceased, but also an inscription which sums up with precision and economy his philosophy of life -- and death: GOING, BUT KNOW NOT WHERE. "Them's true words," Old Gard used to tell anyone who would listen, "but there ain't many folks got honesty and courage to say the same thing." Today, those passing the gravesite, near the front of the Grove Street Cemetery in Putnam, can clearly see Gard's frowning face, the deep, piercing eyes gazing stonily over the real world he found so baffling and into that "other" world he deemed so mysterious.
According to the stories still circulating among the old-timers in Putnam, Gard Wright had a healthy respect for money from a very early age and was known all his life as a subscriber to Poor Richard's admonition to "waste not, want not." Some of his neighbors thought he was probably the stingiest man east of the Connecticut River. Others, less kind, called him a miser. In any event, folks claim that his reputation for being close with a buck got him in trouble early, when he was employed, as a young man, by George Morse, Sr., at the old Bundy brickyard in Harrisville. It seems that some of Bundy's best bricks kept turning up missing. Naturally, suspicion fell on young Phineas. When he couldn't prove his innocence, they say, he was sentenced to attend Sunday School through the summer months -- barefoot.
Maybe Old Gard's dedication to the dollar was a reaction to his father's deserting his family to join the California gold rush. Anyway, his father died a pauper in Stockton, California, in 1849, leaving his son to provide for his mother and sister when Gard had scarcely reached his maturity. Or maybe his sense of thrift was only a more highly-developed example of the New England conservative conscience at work. Whatever the case, Old Gard worked hard all his life to make ends meet for himself and his family. To all outward appearances that struggle seemed always about to be lost, but there were a few observers around town who harbored a sneaking suspicion that underneath his rough exterior lay a hoard of pure gold. Given Old Gard's ways, they said, he just might be the richest man in town.
Legend had it that he was "disappointed in love" when he was in his twenties, so he never married. In fact, everyone knew that Gard became a confirmed woman-hater. He reportedly wrote reams of verse on the perfidy of the female sex, and he frequently used to shake his head and say, "Never beat by a man, but by a woman." Ironic this was, too, because during his entire adult life, Old Gard was beholden to women. He lived for years with his widowed mother and a sister, and after they both died, he spent his last years in the modest family house, ministered to by a niece who served as a kind of nurse-house-keeper. It was she who cut his hair, shaved him, trimmed his beard and washed his face and hands. The final irony in all of this became clear when the old misogynist died. Not only did he confirm the rumors about his hidden wealth, but he left his entire estate -- estimated at $125,000 -- to a woman, his niece-housekeeper. At least that final "beating" by a woman was apparently self-inflicted.
There is little question that his niece's extraordinary inheritance had been amassed, literally, penny by penny. The man who listed his occupation in the Putnam City Directory as "having no business but minding my own" actually spent a lifetime at hard, manual labor. But the various jobs -- hod-carrier, railroad hand (he claimed he broke the first earth for the old "Air-Line" railroad), pig farmer, garbage collector, woodsman -- seldom earned him more than seventy cents a day. Obviously, it took a positive passion for pinching pennies to build an estate of 125,000 real, 1918, pre-tax dollars. Certain concessions, sometimes regarded as peculiar by the rest of Putnam, had to be made.
His life-style, for instance, reflected nothing so much as crushing poverty. During his years as a pig farmer, he was always seen driving about town in a dilapidated wagon drawn by an ancient, sway-backed horse, seeking garbage to feed his swine. His horse, they say, had to survive on hay retrieved from the roadside where it had dropped from passing hay wagons or on grass plucked by Gard from meadow and swale. His clothing, too, was a veritable declaration of destitution. His unwashed body was covered by tattered and fragrant overalls, and on his head perched an old straw hat, held on by a cord that once belonged to a bathrobe. In summer he always went barefoot, perhaps harking back to his boyhood Sunday School "sentence."
If Old Gard had one habit that might be called out of character, it was drinking. Under his buggy seat he was known to secrete a little brown jug which he occasionally uncorked and tipped to his lips. He always drove up to Webster, Massachusetts, to get the jug refilled, though. He refused to buy liquor in Putnam, after some of "the boys" in his home town pulled sort of a mean trick on him. Old-timers recall that the hangers-on at a local saloon got fed up with Gard's incessant requests to "set 'em up" at the bar, with never a reciprocal offer from the frugal pig-farmer. So one night they set him up so frequently that he passed out cold. In fact, when he sobered up early the next morning, he found himself laid out in a coffin, packed in ice.
As thrifty as Gard Wright was, though, cost was apparently no consideration when it came to planning his final resting spot, a project which was said to have occupied much of the last fifteen years of his life. First came the grave, a much more spacious hole than the ordinary, complete with a floor and brick walls on all sides, fashioned by Windham County's best mason. Old Gard told people that he planned it that way so the earth wouldn't crowd him and he "would have plenty of room to turn over and move about." They say he was also thoughtful enough to leave several demijohns of whiskey and gin on the floor of the grave -- dug fifteen years before it became permanently occupied -- so that those who finally buried him might freely drown their sorrows.
Most of Gard's pre-burial planning, however, was directed toward his gravestone, especially the bas-relief bust of himself set in an arched alcove cut into the center of the large slab, directly over "them true words" he lived and died by. People still recall the trouble Old Gard had getting that bust just right. First, after the sculptor had completed the likeness, and the marker was ready to be set in place at the gravesite, Gard was said to have had a dream in which he was denied entry into heaven because his beard was parted. Realizing that he had never done much in his life to endear himself to the Keeper of heaven's gate, and not wishing to take any more chances with possible exclusionary rules, Old Gard had the sculptor chisel the offending part out of the beard. They say it cost the notorious skinflint $400 to form the chin-whiskers into an unparted state.
But that wasn't the end of it. Before the marker could be erected, Gard happened to overhear two villagers who had come around to admire the stone, comment about the length of the beard. Why, the beard was much too long, they agreed, and really should have been trimmed to a "decent" length. After they left, Old Gard examined his bust with a newly-critical eye -- and decided the visitors were dead right. Again the stone-barber was recalled. This time, they say, it set the old man back over $1000 to have the beard chiseled down and shaped to a seemly size.
At last the startling image was completed to the subject's satisfaction, the fitting slogan was cut into the stone, and the granite marker was set in place by the brick-walled tomb, to await the fatal day. On May 2, 1918, Putnam's favorite miser, atheist and general non-conformist, a man who had spent eighty-nine years going he knew not where, finally went.

from Legendary Connecticut by David E. Philips / ISBN 1-880684-05-5 / $17.95

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