By Anne W. Semmes
There was once a great stretch of farmland on North Street owned by a landowner called Sylvanus Reynolds in the 19th century, though his family land-owning predecessors stretch back to the 17th century as early settlers of the Town of Greenwich. The story goes he was drawn to that land – 365 acres – “as the trees grew so large on it. He would cut them down, saw them up for siding and ship them over to England because of a shortage of wood, way back.” So, tells Sam Bridge, Jr. of Bridge Nursery in his oral history at Greenwich Library, wherein we learn that in all that wood working, of “making clapboards for the sides of houses” came the name of Clapboard Ridge Road.
But over the years some of that Reynolds farmland would be sold to the St. Mary Parish for a cemetery. That St. Mary Cemetery story starts in 1884 with land procured on William Street that fast filled up, so in 1899 there was a reported purchase of 12 acres of Reynolds land north of Putnam Cemetery, with entry on North Street, making it “one of the finest locations for a cemetery in the state.” By 1919, those earlier burials on William Street were reinterred in the new St. Mary’s Cemetery down the road from what became the Sam Bridge Nursery.
For Sam Bridge Jr would marry Mary Reynolds, the daughter of Sylvanus Reynolds Jr. in 1950 and be able to move his nursery in 1957 onto some of that Reynolds farmland that ran from North Street to Clapboard Ridge. “We’re still a farm actually,” told Bridge in his narrative. And now Bridge’s sons, Ron and Sam Bridge III continue the narrative.
So, over the years their grandfather, Sylvanus Bridge Jr. had continued to sell off parcels of land to that growing St. Mary’s Cemetery, causing the moving of their grandfather’s house to land that would become the site of the Sam Bridge Nursery. Ron recalls his mother Mary Reynolds Bridge telling of coming home from school to find her house “in a different spot.” That house had indeed sat on the high point of St. Mary’s Cemetery where today is the Priest Circle of buried priests that surrounds the tall cross with crucified Christ.
So where were the Reynolds grandparents buried? “My grandfather Sylvanus Reynolds was buried in the Putnam Cemetery because he was Protestant,” says Ron, “and my grandmother Johanna Reynolds was Catholic, so she was buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery.”
According to Jenine Berardesca, Family Services Director of the St. Mary – Putnam Cemetery, “It’s been some time,” since non-Catholics were barred from being buried at St. Mary’s. And it was in 1987 she tells that the Archdiocese of Bridgeport bought up the Putnam Cemetery to join with St. Mary’s Cemetery to be called the St. Mary – Putnam Cemetery, now said to be a total of 74 acres of which 55 acres have been developed.
And the St. Mary-Putnam Cemetery happens to be one of nine cemetery properties in Fairfield County owned by the Archdiocese of Bridgeport, Berardesca adds.
Historian Davidde Strackbein has documented the history of the Putnam Cemetery for the Greenwich Historical Society and gives tours of that Cemetery. She dates the Putnam Cemetery to 1887 and on a walk-through shows how the chain-link fence separating the two cemeteries has been removed, though some sections are still separated by shrubbery.
But we are then given a tour of the now adjoining, much smaller St. Mary’s Cemetery by superintendent Jason Brander. He takes us to the row of tombstones of those who were reinterred from that first St. Mary Cemetery on Williams Street, with dates showing 1865 and 1880. We walk through a lane of cherry trees, and everywhere there are tree name plaques. Berardesca had shared that the Greenwich Tree Conservancy gives tours of the cemetery, and that she is working on creating an Arboretum on the Cemetery grounds. “We need 100 species of trees,” for that to happen she notes.
Berardesca also shared how in yesteryears families had made visiting cemeteries of their loved ones part of their going to church on Sundays, then afterwards going to the cemetery. (Other uses of cemeteries have surely also included young teens coming to cemeteries to learn how to drive as this reporter experienced growing up!)
But come this Christmastide will be the second annual “Tree of Remembrance” celebration conceived by Berardesca to pay respect to loved ones lost, when a 10-foot tall Tree of Remembrance will be lit throughout the Advent and Christmas season. “We planted three trees for families to bring an ornament to hang on the tree in memory of a loved one,” she tells. Last Christmas there were “hundreds of ornaments adorning the trees, and 200 people came!”
