Looking for a 200-year-old cemetery. At dusk. By ourselves.

This post courtesy of a guest blogger. My sister Jill.
And by guest blogger I mean I totally copied and pasted
the whole thing right off her blog.
Because I just couldn't have said it better myself.
It's all true, by the way.
Except for the washer and dryer part.
I never saw those.

My sister, Amy, and I have been working on our family history and recently discovered that our ancestors on my mom's mother's side lived in Cadiz, Ohio, and that this small town is only two hours away. Inspired by our other sister's spontaneous and exciting trip to California, we decided Friday night that Saturday we were taking a road trip. We left the kids to our husbands and started out on the open road, initiating Amy's new van and prepared with the GPS, protein shakes and bars and bottles of water (ya know, just in case this trip turned out to be an episode of I Survived.) Our first stop was the Cadiz library where we found a book with sketches of the Hitchcock Family Cemetery, where our Hitchcock ancestors are buried. Exciting! An older gentleman was in the library with us and asked us which family names we were researching. We told him and showed him the sketches. "Oh yeah. I did those," he said nonchalantly. He told us how to get there - 3 miles north on route 9, look for the biggest barn in Cadiz on the left, the closed road on the right then hike up the hill. Amy and I knew we had to check it out. We saw the barn! Then the closed road! It was thrilling. We parked the van then walked along the highway to where we thought we saw a trail. Cars where flying by and I was getting a little freaked out. Two women walking on a lonely highway? Perfect horror movie script.

Route 9. The cemetery should have been up the hill to the right.

I turned to Amy and said, "If Dad knew we were doing this...." But I was armed with my camera and my cell phone, which I double... and triple... checked for reception as we trudged up the overgrown hill. Good thing I wore boots; ballet flats never would have held up on this adventure. But all we saw were empty soda cans, old tires, a washer and dryer (??) and lots of deer poop. No headstones. There was a house close by and we debated asking the residents if they knew anything about the old cemetery but decided to head back to where the van was parked and go around the back of the hill. We ducked under the gate that blocked off the road (rebels we are!) and we found a soggy trail leading up to the hill and I got excited. This had to be it. But, we came to a clearing and didn't see anything. We walked around a bit more but the pokey branches and bushes made it difficult. We headed back to the van because it was getting pretty dark and my level of anxiety was quickly rising. We heard men on ATVs off in the distance which made it even worse. But we did not want to give up! We were on a mission! We decided to go to the house we saw earlier but the muddy, unpaved driveway made us nervous and I think the reality of how dumb we were being finally sunk in. Two women. At night. Approaching an unknown house. So, we called it a day, stopped at Wendy's for a Frosty and headed home. Lucky, for us, someone else was able to find the small cemetery back in the '80s and took some pictures, which we found on findagrave.com.

My great-great-great-great-grandfather's final resting spot.

Although we didn't get to see the cemetery, it was exciting enough to be in the small town that our ancestors settled in 1803. It doesn't seem like much has changed since then either - just a McDonald's and a stoplight - so it was easy to picture how life may have been. It was fun playing dectective with you, Amy! Next research destination: Tennessee!

Thank you, Jill, for doing all the dirty work.
Especially the climbing-up-the-muddy-hill-with-me part.
And oh yeah, recording-the-adventure-for-posterity part, too.