Perry L. Gardner: Private Journal #38
Friday Afternoon, October 18, 1991
On Monday, we drove up to Providence to celebrate Jonathan’s 8th Birthday, and Kari and Ollie’s 15th Wedding anniversary, both of which were to take place on the 16th. I drove the red Escort with the stick shift that Bonnie prefers not to drive. The trip was without problems. Both the Mianus and Connecticut River bridges, while under construction, had no delays, but we observed a very bad tie-up on Route 95 southbound over by Branford. It was many miles long, so we decided to come home by another route.
Jonathan was getting ready to play the Wizard in a Dorothy in Oz play. He was also into a Nintendo game with Mario II, which he had just received.
Kari was enthusiastic about her new gig in a rock band, which is giving her a live outlet for her music. Ollie was kind of quiet. His mother, Charlie, came over for a brief visit, and there was a reluctance to talk about problems in how people were feeling.
On Tuesday morning, we spent time with Kari alone, since Ollie was at work and Jonathan at school. Ran errands and did some light shopping. Bonnie left off a painting portrait she had done at Rowe and, in the process, met about four different people she had met there.
(I felt a real high on Tuesday.)
We came home on Route 6 out of Providence, across central Connecticut. to Meriden. It gave us a good look at changing leaves and missed Route 95 hassles. Then we went down the Wilbur Cross Parkway.
We got off the parkway at Fairfield at Bonnie’s suggestion to look for Greenfield Hill, where the Perry family came from. I had often talked about going there, but haven’t given myself permission until now.
I’m very glad we did. We didn’t find it at first and ended up on Post Road in Fairfield, where we asked directions. In Greenfield Hill shopping center, we asked again. The druggist told us where to look for the Greenfield Hill church and the old cemetery. We found it, and wandered around in the rain looking for tombstones.
We found several with familiar names, didn’t find the Perry’s, but did find a taller monument in the center of a family plot with Eliphalet Meeker’s name on it. (On checking our chart, I found he was my great grandmother’s father.) The names Burr and Thorpe were also seen, but it was getting dark, and it was raining, so we went back to Fairfield for supper in an Italian Ristorante.
The tombstones were hard to read, and some so moss-covered and eroded nothing could be made out. Some stones were vandalized, but, in general, it was just a real old cemetery, with veterans of the Revolution markers in it. At some point, they had started a new cemetery down the road, so this one was no longer used.
I would like to go back some day, but first go to the Fairfield Historical Society, which is on the Old Post Road, and to the church, if they have records.
I thought of my father, who had happy memories of this place as a boy where he must have visited Uriah Perry and Abby Jane Meeker.
(Black Rock Creek ran through this area. Dad talked about visiting the shore at Black Rock and sailing.)