Mistakes, how easy to make

but at least most can be fixed.

A couple of months ago, when I was first trying to locate the cemeteries of Frederick county, I would take the motorcycle, my notebook, my handheld GPS and a copy of the first few pages of Names in Stone. I would go and get the coordinates of the cemeteries I knew about and provide updates to Find a Grave. One such cemetery, the Harbaugh Family cemetery near Sabillasville had a photo of what it looked like. Names in Stone described the cemetery as 1/2 mile from Sabillasville between the road and the railroad.

It turns out, that the cemetery that I thought was the Harbaugh cemetery was in fact the United Brethren Cemetery. Imagine my surprise when I went back last weekend, took some photos, went home and tried to upload them to find out that none of the graves matched. After looking through both Names in Stone and Find a Grave I figured out my mistake. Who would have known that two cemeteries of about the same size would be very close to one another. Now I'll have to figure out exactly where the Harbaugh family cemetery is.

I did however find two stones that were not listed in either Names in Stone or Find a Grave, Jacob Harbaugh and his wife Rebecca Harbaugh. All in all a good thing I figured out my mistake and found what might have been lost information.

Old Documents and eBay

I peruse eBay quite a bit for things relating to Frederick. I've gotten lucky to once stumble upon some life insurance payouts from one of my great-great-grandparents to one of his daughters. I also occasionally bought something in the hopes that I might get lucky again. Below are two recent purchases.

Here is one such document, it's a loan paper from 1853. I bought 20 or so of such documents, most of them are from the Frederick county area, though I did get one that was from Frederick county Virginia. None of them deal with direct family members so I will most likely donate them to the Frederick County Historical Society at some point in the future.

This is a page from a ledger, I'm not fully sure what this ledger deals with as it was called the R.R. #4 ledger, but it deals mostly with flower, butter and other such things. There were originally some 250 pages, but the first 50 pages or so are missing. Some of the pages look like this, torn and bent, but 200 or so pages are in good condition. In this case I have gotten lucky, one of my great-great grandfathers is listed and has two pages of entries, it might not be much, but it does flesh out his life a bit.

Also note men are still named "of", as in this case, John Flook of H. The dates are from around 1905 so these were probably some of the last people named as such. Again, after copying the needed pages, this will most likely going to be donated to the historical society. 

Veteran's Day

Very few of my direct ancestors served in the armed forces. My father served in Vietnam, his father in WWII. Prior to that I have one or two that served in the American Revolution. I have yet to find a direct ancestor that served in the Civil War, WWI or the Korean War.

 

 

My grandfather, pictured here, was an MP during at least part of WWII. I really haven't researched what he did. Notice how on the photo on the left there are black marks, this was done on the original photos before it was sent home, the blackouts were done to keep the enemy from knowing where he was at. Even his company patches were blocked out.

 

 Here's a photo of my grandfather and a motorcycle, I'm guessing it's his since he is holding it. I didn't know him well, he died when I was 9, so I never talked to him about riding. I never really talked to him at all which is a shame. I have some memories of my father riding a motorcycle, but that was when I was quite young. It seems riding motorcycles is in the genes. 

Have a good Veteran's Day and remember those that served.  

Busy few weeks

The last few weeks have been busy around here. Every other weekend I have my two girls, which keeps me from the motorcycle and usually looking things around Frederick. I also took a vacation to the Outer Banks for a weekend, which again took away from finding interesting things in the county. I have found some interesting things though, and gotten some nice things from eBay that at some point will be donated to the historical society.

I am still documenting cemeteries in the Frederick county area and on a day off last week I decided to find a few more. Most of these I knew right where they were and they were mapped out in the ADC map of Frederick county. Unfortunately I left my tripod at home and wasn't able to take many photos. I did however, verify where five or six cemeteries were at. Slowly but surely I'm getting the locations of all of the cemeteries in the county and can map them all out.

Here I am learning to hang glide, it was an interesting experience.  I've always wanted to try so I went for it.

There is some air between me and the ground, not much, but some. The wind was not cooperating as much as it could have. The next time I will have to do a tandem flight and get some real air. 

 Near the "Lost Colony" national park is the Elizabethan gardens. One rose bush was still in bloom.

Found this little guy when I was trying to photograph a spider, I think I scared off his dinner.