Family of Asa FISH Monument

Family of Asa FISH Monument
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel

This is a monument for the Honorable Asa Fish and family. Asa was the son of Deacon Sands Fish and his wife Bridget Gallup. They are buried in the Old Fish Burying Ground in Groton.

Asa Fish was brother to my direct line ancestor, Levina Fish. This makes him my 3rd great grand uncle.

Levina was a "force" to be reckoned with in my family. I am thinking that she may have "moved" Asa and his wife Prudence to Elm Grove. The evidence for this is that I know she had other gravestones (and their remains) to this beautiful cemetery in Mystic and the fact that the Fish genealogy says Asa and Prudence are buried in the cemetery on Pequot Hill, which is the Old Fish Burying Ground.

In Levina's day, status in the community was everything. She wanted it and she got it. There is a newspaper account of her lavish Thanksgiving dinners, her son the Rev. Frederic Denison, a prominent Baptist minister and writer, openly adored her and also, she never missed an opportunity to remind her family how important they were. Now, this may sound pretentious, but because she did this, I have been able to find out more about my Denison, Fish and Gallup families, and the Mystic and Stonington area history.

Imagine how button-busting proud she would be to have me write about her and find all these gravestones. I can feel her cheering me on from heaven.

I took this photo last July, and in a few minutes snapped almost 20 photos of this families gravestones. JE Rowley, a fellow Fish descendant, gave me a list of his direct line "Fish folk" and guess what, most of them are right in this section. That makes taking their photographs worthwhile.