The Highways Traveled

This trip was mostly about the total solar eclipse happening in the U.S. on April 8th. Someone I knew in Kansas City retired back to her childhood home in southwestern Indiana. THat house is just five miles east of the center line of the eclipse. Just had to hope for a clear sky for viewing the eclipse that started there around 3:00 pm EDT. Everything else about this trip was just places on my To-Maybe-Visit-Someday. Which of the two dozen or so places made the list changed several times before settling on the route actually taken. These places included some national parks, one college campus, and, many family history places where ancestors lived and were buried.

MISSOURI: It rained the entire trip from Kansas City yo here. Went to Pike County first and expecting to go to Lincoln second. Hoping to find when/where/how great great grandmother Riggs met and married Thomas Melvin. The Riggs started out in Lincoln county and in the late 1840's went to Pike County. I was incredibly fortunate to even find a marriage record for Thomas and Eliza since I really had no idea when/where they were married. Finding the marriage record in Pike meant I could skip Lincoln county researchj.
ILLINOIS: Illinois have several counties where ancestors lived in the 19th century: Washington, Perry, Randolph, Williamson, Johnson, Vermilion, Will and Pecatonica. Only that last one was not planned for a visit with this trip. Results and findings per county:
    - St. John's Church in Washington county is pretty much in ruins and likely will soon be torn down. The adjacent cemetery is in good shape but many of the older headstones are either unreadable or are written in German. Married and/or buried here were the families of Buhr, Oltjendiers, Janssen and Sanders.
    - Tried to get to the Wild Hyena Cemetery (close to St. John's) that is presumably at the end of Dove Road off highway 15. However, the gravel and dirt road dipped into the Elkhorn Creek which had flooded the road, making it impassable either in the car or on foot. Unknown whether the cemetery is actually there and has readable headstones. The only ancestor reported to be buried here is Lucinda Spencer, wife of Hawkins Ragland.
    - Found a marriage record in Nashville (seat for Washington county) for William Buhr-Martha Ragland In Washington county. A nice find!
    - In the Perry county Tamaroa Cemetery southeast of Nashville I found the headstones for the two Hawkins Ragland. This one is not the ancestor but his information is sometimes confused with the ancestor who is buried in Bethel Cemetery.
    - The county offices in Pinckneyville, the county seat of Perry county, was a fruitless sortie.
    - In the Bethel Cemetery about twelve miles west of Pin ckneyville I found the headstone for the ancestor Hawkins Ragland. His wife Lucinda is not buried there, she is reportedly buried in the Wild Hyena Cemetery in Washington county.
    - Randolph county only had one ancestor there -- Samuel Clendenin -- and prior to this trip I found some land purchases he made during the 1855-1865 time he lived in this county.
    - Williamson county had the will of Thomas Clendenin. His wife, Rachel Woody, reportedly had written her will in the same year as her husband Thomas but the county office reported they were unable to find her will.
    - Johnson county had the marriage record of William H. Deaton and Elizabeth Clendenin. They reported they did not have the birth record of the son of William and Elizabeth which was suspected but had to check it out since Johnson county was one of three places their first son, ancestor Robert, was born.
    - Fort Defiance State Park in Cairo has a great view of where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi River. The water surface area there at that point is many, many acres. I had seen it decades ago while crossing the bridge over that point and had long wanted to return to get a photograph of that point.
    - After going to several other states, then returning to northeastern Illinois, I visited for the fourth time Vermilion county and its county seat of Danville. This time I was looking for information based on new clues gained in the past year.
    - Three national park sites ended my touring of Illinois for this trip. Two are in the Chicago metro area -- Pullman and Portage -- and the third is the Illinois-Michigan Canal at LaSalle, Illinois.
TENNESSEE: Tennessee to mostly visit some cemeteries in the western half of the state where ancestors are buried. Skipped Memphis research this time. The Deaton Cemetery I was able to walk to across some unplanted farmland to photograph the four headstones there. I easily got to the Bailey Cemetery near Mount Joy and passed twice to all of the about 250 headstones but many of the older ones were worn unreadable. About a dozen main families are in this cemetery, none being ancestral family names. The Woody Cemetery near Santa Fe is on private property -- the owners were not at home -- so all I could do was use my camera zoom lense to get a photo of three headstones viewable from the road. I did unexpectedly find another national park sign for the Natchez Trace Parkway entry near Santa Fe.
LOUISIANA: New Orleans had two places missed in prior visits - campus signs for the University of New Orleans and the Jean Laffite National Park. Going here from the other destinations of this trip caused me to add 800 miles and ten hours of driving (plus stopping at two places to visit there). I would have liked to visit my three first cousins living in the New Orleans area but I had no idea which day, and what time of day, I would be there. I was actually two days ahead of my original expected date of arrival.
MISSISSIPPI: Mississippi had two national park sites in Tupelo to visit -- the Natchez Trace Parkway entry sign and the Tupelo National Battlefield Monument (no visitor center!). Early afternoon traffic was unbelievable for such a small town.
ALABAMA: Alabama was just a pass-thru state on this trip, and then it was just along the northwest boundary with Mississippi. Only place really left in Alabama is a repeat of the Russell Cave national park that was unexpectedly closed when I arrive there a few years ago.
KENTUCKY: Kentucky was just a pass-thru state for this trip although I have recently discovered several families moved to either Illinois or Missouri from Kentucky so someday I might need to do some further research in several counties in the state.
INDIANA: Indiana served two purposes for this trip -- a "base" hotel to be at the night before the total solar eclipse on Monday April 8th, and, two, to see (provided the clouds cooperated) the eclipse from the yard of my friend Cathy. She retired from her KC job and moved back into the house where she grew up in and her parents left it to her and her brother (and she bought out his half since he lives in Washington state). The center line of the 115-mile wide total eclipse was five miles from her home. So the plan was to watch from there. Plus, she is an expert photographer so I could get tips for photographing the eclipse!

O H     M Y   !!! The eclipse experience lived up to everything I have ever read about them. And, I was very fortunate in that southwestern Indiana was one of very few U.S. places up to that point (from Mexico and Texas) to have a mostly clear sky to view it. Cathy and I practiced some before it started then sat and waiting for it to start (the moon came in from the "four o'clock" position and moved towards the "ten o'clock" position). Then as soon as the total eclipse finished, we stopped watching and downloaded our numerous photos. I took just over 150 photos and most were pretty good (a few fuzzy one when I started rapidly clicking). And, we took time to just look up through our solar glasses to see the eclipse "live' instead of through a camera. Truly, truly amazing!!! Now I know why they say that once a person has seen a total eclipse, they will remember it for the rest of their life!
Oh, as for the rest of Indiana, I went to the library in Terra Haute and was able to find three articles/notations in the newspaper about the marriage of my great grandparents Wilson. They gave the address of the parents of the bride (since that is where the wedding ceremony took place) and I was able to find the great great great grandparents (Melvins) in both the 1884 and 1885 city directories at that address. Quite a nice discovery.


MISSED VISITING:
--Wild Hyena Cemetery -- creek flooded the only road to it, and a dirt and gravel road at that!
--Woody Cemetery -- it is on private property and the owners were not at home
--Lincoln County Missouri -- because of the find of the marriage certificate in the northerly neighboring county of Pike, no big reasons to do family research here.
--Grant's Farm National Park site in south St. Louis -- it is closed for a while
--Iowa counties of Plymouth and Woodbury. I realized that, instead of taking the 330-mile detour to these counties, that I will pass right through them on the first leg of the trip next year to Fairbanks, Alaska.
--Danville, Illinois courthouse (I will call or write them after I return home) and the nearby Locket Cemetery (it is on private property and it looked like no one was home) where only ancestor William Metier is supposed to be buried.

OBSERVATIONS: Some observations made while traveling in this area:

The Bests:

  1. Spring-colorful trees
  2. Passing through my main hometown of Jackson, Tennessee. It has grown so,*/ so much since we moved from there in 1971. But I still recognized some of the streets although most businesses along them have changed.
  3. Several important family history discoveries, especially for the Melvin family
  4. Construction was less than I expected to encounter, only a handful of places that caused a delay of more than five minutes.


The Worsts:

  1. Baymont Hotel in Washington, Illinois -- I gave feedback about it in my online reservation and said that it is THE ABSOLUTE WORST hotel experience I have ever had. It was because I was given a room in a full hotel (the next day was the solar eclipse) with my window looking into the incredibly noisy and bright (ceiling lights) swimming pool with its door to the lobby that slammed shut then bounced two more times, each time pounding my wall and floor.

The Totals:




Just to list this as of April 2024: