Somewhat ironic cache

[+Kyle98632]

Two days ago my father and I went geocaching and found something interesting to me. Im interested to know if things like this have happened to others too?

 

We were going to find this cache down a logging road. The area hadnt been cut in sometime and was dense with trees, but we we were getting closer to the end of this road we noticed something. It turned out to be a burial site of three people from the 1920's. After taking a few pictures of the area we found the nearby cache.

 

Later on that day we stopped by one of my relatives house to take a break from caching. We happened to mention the burial site and the general location and it turned out that two of the people buried there were some of my relatives, specifically my great great aunt and uncle. I then went on to hear about an entire branch of my family I didnt know a thing about.

 

I just found it really crazy that this cache actually had me learn alot about my distant family. Anyone else have something like this happen, when geocaching leads you to find out something like this?

[+rockymtn8iv]

WOW!

That is interesting.

We've had lots of interesting experiences over the years but nothin' like that.

Perhaps you could get the CO some information to include on the ole Kings Crown.

Looks like they'ld be happy to include it in the description.

Congrats and HAPPY CACHIN' to you!

[+roziecakes]

I have not had this happen to me, but that is WAY COOL. Thank you so much for sharing this story!

[sabrefan7]

I agree,, a very interesting story! I love old historical grave yards.

[+Jennifer&Dean]

I've had a similar thing happen. Twice!

 

First, about 2 years ago I was geocaching in an area of PA that I know my family is from. I was exploring the area using an old map to find the original farm. After finding the farm (now a school), I went caching and I found a cache about half a mile away. As I pulled away from the cache and came around a grove of trees I noticed a big old Mennonite Church. So I pulled in as I knew the family had been Mennonite. The first row of stones I walked down were the graves of my GGGGrandfather and his family.

 

The other time was 2 months ago in Mystic, RI. There was a cache in the graveyard next door to the hotel and I started reading names on the gravestones that I had to step over and around to get to the tree where the cache was hidden. The Dean family was buried there. About 15-18 of them. My husband is named for his mother's maiden name- Dean. And these folks are related! Was totally awesome to literally stumble across this group of stones.

 

Jen

[4wheelin_fool]

Two days ago my father and I went geocaching and found something interesting to me. Im interested to know if things like this have happened to others too?

 

We were going to find this cache down a logging road. The area hadnt been cut in sometime and was dense with trees, but we we were getting closer to the end of this road we noticed something. It turned out to be a burial site of three people from the 1920's. After taking a few pictures of the area we found the nearby cache.

 

Later on that day we stopped by one of my relatives house to take a break from caching. We happened to mention the burial site and the general location and it turned out that two of the people buried there were some of my relatives, specifically my great great aunt and uncle. I then went on to hear about an entire branch of my family I didnt know a thing about.

 

I just found it really crazy that this cache actually had me learn alot about my distant family. Anyone else have something like this happen, when geocaching leads you to find out something like this?

 

That's a pretty cool story, but it's not ironic, it's cooincidental. Irony is the opposite.

 

I drove into a cemetary in NC while playing in the snow with the jeep and the first stone I looked at had the guy's death day the same day and year as my birthday. As I sat there pondering it, I noticed that his son was buried directly behind him and had died on the same day that he did, only 22 years earlier. It kind of gave me the chills and I took off.

[+silksmybaby]

I was caching in the cemetery near my house and stumbled upon a relative's grave I did not know lived in the area. Came home and asked my mom about it and she said that they hadn't known where they were buried or when they had died and that she was glad I came upon it so we knew.

[+jellis]

Was that in the logging area? They had to log around it? Wow yes that is interesting.

[+TheBeanTeam]

 

We were going to find this cache down a logging road. The area hadnt been cut in sometime and was dense with trees, but we we were getting closer to the end of this road we noticed something. It turned out to be a burial site of three people from the 1920's. After taking a few pictures of the area we found the nearby cache.

 

 

You should consider creating an Out of Place Graves waymark for the location and sharing the story there as well. A history and coincidence like this is worthy of recording for posterity.

 

Very interesting.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

I am related to one of the men that helped raise the first state flag for California. There is a statue in Sonoma with his likeness represented. After reading the OPs story I'm thinking about trying to find out where he was buried and see if there is a cache located in the cemetary.

[+Mbomber33]

Two days ago my father and I went geocaching and found something interesting to me. Im interested to know if things like this have happened to others too?

 

We were going to find this cache down a logging road. The area hadnt been cut in sometime and was dense with trees, but we we were getting closer to the end of this road we noticed something. It turned out to be a burial site of three people from the 1920's. After taking a few pictures of the area we found the nearby cache.

 

Later on that day we stopped by one of my relatives house to take a break from caching. We happened to mention the burial site and the general location and it turned out that two of the people buried there were some of my relatives, specifically my great great aunt and uncle. I then went on to hear about an entire branch of my family I didnt know a thing about.

 

I just found it really crazy that this cache actually had me learn alot about my distant family. Anyone else have something like this happen, when geocaching leads you to find out something like this?

 

 

that is an awesome story.

did you tell tis story in the log you wrote when logging this cache on geocaching.com?

if so it should be nominated for the new lost and found thing that ground speak has just launcehed

[FaithCacher]

That is so awesome. No experiences like that for me yet, but hopefully someday.

[+Nurse Nanna]

Been there, done that!

I worked a very long time on a puzzle cache near me.

 

At about the same time, and totally unrelated, I heard that I had some ancestors buried near here too, even though my family is not from this area. It was one of those weird coincidences. I moved 100 miles from where I was raised, only to find out completely by accident that over 140 years ago I had relatives who lived and died within a few miles of my current house. (in the Civil War times, two of whom were vets).

I had searched without success for their gravestones, until just a short time before working on this cache puzzle. I had just been to the area and had found this out of the way and very overgrown cemetery where three of my ancestors are buried.

 

Fast forward to this puzzle. Several of us worked on it for some time. Eventually we solved it, and much to my surprise, one of the answers was the last name of my ancestors (and an unusual name at that). These names were put into a crossword puzzle, and eventually led to the very place where my family was buried.

 

It was one of those most serendipitous occasions.

And to add even more to it...when I lost my parents, I inherited a whole mess of stuff.

Two of those items are the award pin given to one of the Civil War Soldiers buried here and a letter he wrote to home telling of his experiences.

 

Neat, huh?

[+TheAlabamaRambler]

Been there, done that!

I worked a very long time on a puzzle cache near me.

 

At about the same time, and totally unrelated, I heard that I had some ancestors buried near here too, even though my family is not from this area. It was one of those weird coincidences. I moved 100 miles from where I was raised, only to find out completely by accident that over 140 years ago I had relatives who lived and died within a few miles of my current house. (in the Civil War times, two of whom were vets).

I had searched without success for their gravestones, until just a short time before working on this cache puzzle. I had just been to the area and had found this out of the way and very overgrown cemetery where three of my ancestors are buried.

 

Fast forward to this puzzle. Several of us worked on it for some time. Eventually we solved it, and much to my surprise, one of the answers was the last name of my ancestors (and an unusual name at that). These names were put into a crossword puzzle, and eventually led to the very place where my family was buried.

 

It was one of those most serendipitous occasions.

And to add even more to it...when I lost my parents, I inherited a whole mess of stuff.

Two of those items are the award pin given to one of the Civil War Soldiers buried here and a letter he wrote to home telling of his experiences.

 

Neat, huh?

Way cool! We would love to publish these stories in The Online Geocacher, a free online magazine by, for and about geocachers and their stories. Especially his letter!

 

I found Pig Iron Cache shortly after I started caching in 2003 and discovered that it was a Civil War memorial site at the remains of an iron foundry. It's about five miles from my house in an area I had walked and ridden my bicycle through all the years of my youth but never knew that this memorial park was there. I knew that the streets in that area were all named after Civil War battles, but had never asked why, and who stops to read those old marker signs anyway?

 

Pig Iron has ever since finding it been my favorite cache because that's where history finally struck home with me. I read that metal sign and realized that each of them tells a remarkable story. Just sitting in that little park looking at the remains of the stacked-rock buildings made me keenly aware of how easy my life is. This cache (now archived) was located where a fellow named McElwain had moved his foundry from MS to an undeveloped area in central Alabama to avoid Wilson's Raiders path through MS, who were tasked with destroying the South's infrastructure so that the South could not rise again.

 

Upon learning that Wilson's Raiders were headed his way McElwain dismantled his huge foundry, packed it all on carts and mules, along with the houses and households of fifty men, and hacked his own roads 100+ miles to a place in AL where he had heard that there was a dale which had water, coal, iron ore and the other makings of iron. He built his foundry there and named it Irondale. He later built a school for his employees and surrounding families, which was named McElwain School. I live in the City of Irondale, my kids went to McElwain school, and until I found Pig Iron Cache it never occurred to me to ask where those names came from!

 

My family has the diary my GGGrandfather wrote on loan to the local historical society but I may borrow it back long enough to create a series along his trail during the War of Northern Aggression. I think of him quite a lot when geocaching because of some interesting similarities.

 

He was from Selma AL and the war took him to West Point MS, where he fought Wilson's Raiders and was hit with a Yankee mini-ball. He had his leg amputated in a field hospital set up in someone's house near the town of West Point. A chronic bone infection from the amputation prevented him from returning to farming and the family moved here to Birmingham, where he became a dentist.

 

We have a tintype picture of him which shows that his amputation (left high above-knee) was at almost the exact level where I lost my left leg one hundred and thirty years later in 1999 due to chronic bone infection after being wounded in 1972.

 

Far different from my experience, however, after a period of recovery living in a tent he had to walk back to Selma using a tree branch fashioned into a crutch. Local women evidently had quite an industry making crutches for our soldiers. Whenever I am hiking on my well-padded light-weight slip-resistant aluminum crutches along a trail to a cache and the terrain gets a bit rough I think about him having to walk, to hop, really, on one crutch, over one hundred miles of rough trails to get back to his farm. I'm never far from my air-conditioned 4wd SUV. Yeah, my life is a breeze by comparison!

 

In 2006 my Aunt moved from Birmingham AL to Cedar Bluff MS, about 15 miles from West Point. She had inherited his diary and knew that he had been wounded somewhere in that part of MS, but no one knew exactly where.

 

So on a visit I introduced her to geocaching. I looked up a PQ of nearby caches, loaded my GPS and we set out.

 

The nearest cache is Clay County Virtual Cache GCD123, a virtual, about six miles from her new home, ~half-way on the road between Cedar Bluff and West Point.

 

Imagine our amazement when we found the virtual to be a monument memorializing the very battle that he was wounded in! She drove past it daily and had never stopped to see what it was. Quite a coincidence! Without geocaching we would never have discovered this nexus with our family history.

 

His son would help bring telegraph and telephones to Alabama, his son also become a dentist, and his son would become a doctor, and my father.

 

But the weirdness didn't stop there. Here in Birmingham I went hunting for Alabama's first cache, Trussville Civitan, which I later adopted and still own.

 

It's at the back edge of a park bounded by residences. I'm looking for the cache and an old fella comes out of his house to the back fence and asks me what I'm doing. I explain the game and he doesn't seem to get it, but he doesn't care that it's there. Now, here in Alabama folks are just naturally friendly and will strike up a conversation at the drop of a hat. Who you are kin to is the basis for most conversations with strangers.

 

We get to talking about ancestors and where my family is from (until I was fourteen we had five generations of family alive in Birmingham, and now that I'm a grandfather we do again! So does my wife's family) and he thinks my name is familiar. I could tell that he was pondering connections as we talked. Finally he tells me he remembers my Granddaddy because he once arrested him! I was a baby when my Granddaddy died and never knew him, but I had heard stories which made me believe that he was a good man.

 

Turns out that the old fella had been a Constable when my Granddaddy was a dentist. The laws at that time made it illegal to make dental appliances for "colored people". My Granddaddy ignored that law and made wooden false teeth at night after his white clients were gone for the colored employees of local businesses, under the logic that a man who can eat well can work harder. The Constable arrested him for it, and all these years later, having never heard that story, here I am at a cache meeting the Constable!

 

It is indeed a small world. Geocaching can make it smaller!

Edited June 6, 2010 by TheAlabamaRambler