The Gardner Cemetery - Swansea

Fall River has it’s Richard(s) Borden, and Swansea, Mass. has it’s Peleg Gardner. Lots of Bordens, lots of Gardners. Like the Richard Bordens, old Peleg split his vast property holdings to his sons and it was through their descendents that Lizzie Borden’s father, Andrew, acquired much of his Swansea property. Most of the “founding” Gardners are buried at the Gardner Cemetery, not far from the “lower farm” at 1205 Gardner’s Neck Road.

There are many associations ‘twix the Bordens and Gardners within the Andrew J. Borden family, be they legal, familial or scandalous. As previously stated on this blog, it was a cousin, Orrin Gardner, who inherited much of Emma Borden’s estate, including the early (and recently discovered) portraits of Lizzie & Emma’s biological parents, Andrew Borden and Sarah Morse, as well as family albums and the Borden bible - all shown here.

Carl Becker, Swansea Historical Society President, ponders the “Borden Bible”. The portraits are available for public viewing at the Luther’s Museum in Swansea and the albums available to the public at the Swansea Library.

It was Preston Gardner who rescued Lizzie from the notorious Tilden-Thurber shoplifting incident of 1897. Years ago, Florence Brigham of The Hill People’s Historical Society (whoops, that’s Fall River Historical Society) told me of the story related below which was typed up after Mrs. Dawson came in and told it to Florence so as to be a “matter of record for our archives” as she (Florence) put it.

(The two paintings on porcelain were “Love’s Awakening” and “Love’s Dream”.) The image below is “Love’s Awakening”.

Preston is buried between his two wives with a whole slew of other Gardners at Mt. Hope Cemetery in Swansea.

A couple of unrelated items of interest: The Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast finally has a replacement screen door, much to the welcome of case “purists” not to mention for those annual August 4th re-enactments.

And the Central Congregational Church, dba International Institute of Culinary Arts, has got a not-so-tattered mesh fabric protecting it’s steeple from spilling forth more bricks.

Getting the Fall River community vested in “what they’ve lost, what they’ve destroyed and what they have left” is something that culinary institute owner Chef George Karousos is passionately interested in and finalizing his booklet of that title. He showed us the booklet and its absolutely wonderful. I would describe it as a simplistic cross between Judity Boss’s Pictorial History of Fall River and the Historic Fall River book illustrating the architectural types of structures in the city.

After lunch at the Abbey Grille, myself, Doug Tweedy, General Manager WSAR Radio and Chef George discussed the malaise in Fall River with regard to historic preservation and how he can best get underwriting for printing and publicity for the booklet through community outreach.