Captina Friends Cemetery

Standing on the northwest corner of the cemetery, the north being closest to the creek. The creek is down over the hill to the left. This is looking back east, towards Ohio SR 26.

On August 14, 2009, I set out to go Cemetery Hopping. I prepared in the weeks prior by entering several years of geneology correspondance into Family Tree Maker, and printing out geneology reports, going to the Belmont County Engineers website to find out who surrounding property owners were for private cemeteries, discussing places I was going and people I was looking for on geneology forums and on the phone, and by printing out maps and finding general whereabouts on a Belmont County, OH map. I had 3 cemeteries planned, but visited 5 total. Since it was prime haymaking day for my dear husband, Bruce, I took our 3 y/o, Eilidh with me. I fully expected her to self destruct early on, but instead, she had A BLAST. She even posed for me to introduce one long researched and long awaited CAPTINA FRIENDS CEMETERY, found very close to the corner of Captina Highway/SR 149 and SR 26, not very far south of Barnesville, OH. It is known in military records as the OLD BROWN CEMETERY or locally in more modern times by the family who most recently lived on the property known to the locals as the BENSON CEMETERY.

The entrance sits within sight of SR 149, with public access technically from SR 26 along the small power lines. However, I found a trailer sitting right on SR 26 with a "For Sale by Owner" sign in front. It appeared to be a hunting retreat for someone. Indeed, when I called the number on the sign, the owner lived in Akron. He said it included 74 acres, and he was asking $130,000. I wasn't in the market, but seeing as how I knew several people very interested in this cemetery, and seeing that it was an old Quaker site, it seemed a wonderful place for a Friends retreat, or for some Friend to own, just for its spiritual connection with a Meeting of the past.

There is a connection most people don't understand about many Quakers who still practice after the silence way of worship. They are sometimes spiritually bonded with the past, and the places in which that past took place. Captina Friends Meeting quit holding worship in 1836. My interest in it originally arose when my Methodist paternal grandmother left handwritten notes that one of her great aunts was married to a Smith in Captina Friends Meeting. My mother (other side of the family completely) is a Quaker, and I know of many, many Quaker Smiths through growing up being involved in Friends circles. One of my childhood playmates came from a line of them. Captina Friends Meeting records have been lost, to my understanding. Losing records is an unusual occurrence for Friends. They take notes, keep journals and pass down to their descendants notes on nearly everything.

The records may be found someday, but who knows where? They could be stored away in someone's attic, or in a back corner of an archive at a college like Swarthmore near Philadelphia, PA, or Guilford in North Carolina. I've known a few Quaker scholars on forums who frequent such places and find such suprises. Or they may be ruined and gone.

There were only about 6 legible stones in Captina Friends Cemetery. They were all but one military stones, which in a Friends Cemetery is not unusual, but their legibility in contrast to other grave markers was, indeed. At that point in history, prior to 1836, Friends did not use gravestones as we know them today, if they used markers at all. It was considered worldly. I remember hearing stories of graveyard trustees removing gravestones. I have to deduce that either the family or the military has thus placed these stones. One person who gave me directions to the cemetery was a veteran.

The stones were:

Wallace Reeves, COL 186th Ohio Inf

Milton Reeves, COL 129th Ohio Inf

S Hoopes 186th Ohio Inf

Mary Ellen (was all I could read)

J.R. & L. Catton, Died (illegible) 1819 possibly

Simeon Breech, Shot and Killed in a gunfight, birth, 23 Aug, 1782, death 30 May 1849

Abraham Gray, PVT, 3 Regt, Ulster County Militia, Rev. War, 1754, 1846 (newest stone)

I did about 10 hours of looking-up today. Samuel Hoopes was mustered for the Civil War at age 22 on 2/21/1865, and was killed 3/23/1865 in Louisville, KY.

Simeon Breech was in a gunfight as law enforcement between two people, as the story goes, and neither one survived.

Abraham Gray was born to Louis M. and Loretta Marie Ann Gray in NY; married Sheryl Marie (uk last name) and had children John, Peter 18 Jun 1787 Ulster County, Benjamin 1788 and Samuel 1791.

I could not find any information on the Catton, nor the two Reeves.

George Wetzel, Lewis Wetzel's father, was buried at the head of Captina Island which sits in the Ohio River near the mouth in April 1782 after being hit in the chest with a bullet during a hunting trip with his two sons. "That Dark and Bloody River," Allan W. Eckert.

The Battle of Captina, according to Martin Baker, took place in 1794, a full account which can be found at the website of a nearby bed&breakfast:

http://strattonhouse.com/index.php?section=history&content=31135103

Sometime after 1794 to 1836 spanned the possible existance of Captina Friends Meeting. That was about 40 years. Walking through this graveyard on a sunny, comfortable August day in 2009 gave me a spiritual feeling, a bond with my ancestors and relatives who may or may not have been buried there. You can't tell where the meetinghouse might have once stood. But ginseng grew at the base of one of the illegible gravestones, in defiance of its once massive harvest. It is a beautiful place. I hope that whomever the owner sells it to will appreciate its significance in the history of this area of Ohio.

East Finley Friends Cemetery, est. 1700

I've been depressed for 2 weeks. It is a milestone to make that statement because I tend to deny, even to myself, that I'm not coping well. The action was somewhat premeditated, somewhat whimsical. On my way home from work two days ago, I took the Claysville exit and decided to look for an old cemetery.

I had tried 2 0r 3 years ago without success. Since then I lost the directions. For a week, I've been looking for the directions. I finally resorted to calling an old coworker whose number I still had. When I first began working in Washington County in 2004, I was taken aback at how many people came into the hospital talking about "up by Quaker Hill," or "out by that old Quaker cemetery," or referred to a Quaker place of some sort. I was at a loss to find any Quakers, of which I am one. What happened to all of them? I had only dabbled a little into geneology at that time, but enough to know they had once populated that part of the state fairly thickly. Now there were virtually none.

Jimmy Carter's book, "The Hornets Nest," made me realize that Washington may have been a major crossroads from the South, once-upon-a-time. And then there was the day I decided to look straight back my maternal line. I ran directly into Agnes Childrey, the reknowned ancestor among Quakers who was kidnapped by Indians from a Quaker settlement in Georgia, raised by them, and then rescued by the man who would become her husband, and also my ancestor. It occurred to me that the Indians who kidnapped her were most likely the Creeks, from whom Bartram learned his New World botany.

Someone on a geneology group I belonged to asked a question, and I opened up my copy of Bill Taber's book, "The Eye of Faith," lovingly given to me by my parents when it was published, to find the answer. Bill's daughter is one of my best friends. There, in the back cover, was a map of meetings in western PA in the 1800's. The map had been there all along.

In 2004, this somewhat annoying coworker kept mixing me up with Mennonites. She and her friends went to Amish Country, and it made her think of me. I lent her "The Peaceable Kingdom," by Jan de Hartog, hoping to help her understand a little better. She never read it. But she came to work one day, telling me about this really old Quaker graveyard in East Findlay, which I came to discover was south of Claysville. Her husband had a friend who worked in the township garage, and knew where it was. She gave me directions. Some people came to care for it every year, but she didn't know who they were. They would cut trees and clean it up a little.

Two weeks ago now, my mother announced she was getting married again. I was already struggling with emotions about something else. I was truly happy for her. But what I didn't expect was to miss my father so much. I realized on about the 3rd day while searching frantically for these 2-years-lost graveyard directions that I was compensating for my grief by looking for my ancestors. I'd been stacking up papers and documents people had sent to me selflessly for just as long. One day I spent over 8 hours putting all that information into Family Tree Maker. I had lots of more important things to do, but could not draw myself away from geneology.

I gave up looking, finally, and called Linda. After yelling questions to her husband in the other room, she deduced that you followed East Finley Road until it ended and forked 3 ways, and you turned left. Then there was some road you went down with berry in the name - she thought maybe Strawberry. She said she'd ask her husband's friend for directions again. We chatted some more about our employer, coworkers, patients, pregnancies and breastfeeding, and said goodbye.

My depression was about 2 weeks ripe. On a whim after work on Tuesday, on my way home, I got off at the Claysville exit. No, I didn't have any directions other than what she told me over the phone. It was not entirely an intelligent thing to do. There was 1/4 tank of gas in my car. My cell phone had been shut off for nonpayment due to a $450 bill that takes too much explanation, but the point is, I couldn't call my husband to tell him I'd be late. I went on anyway. I turned right at the Sacred Heart Church in Washington - the one across the road from the Methodist Church, on old Route 40 as you're entering Claysville, PA. The road markers along the way said I was on East Finley Road. It wasn't quite dusk yet - around 7:30 in early August. It had rained earlier in the day and was a little moist and misty, but the air was clear. I cracked my windows a little and turned down the air, and put in a CD with Celtic music.

I drove, thinking I should turn off to the left somewhere. I had two years earlier, I thought. Did this road really dead end into 3 forks? It was too well-kept. I looked across the voluminous foothills of farms, thinking about the Quakers moving through and settling there, and wondering, "What place would they have liked to live and farm?" I asked my ancestors and God to guide me, and whispered a few prayers under my breath. It was a beautiful, soft, cool, humid evening after a long day at work. I took each curve slowly, in order to peer out and imagine what it may have looked like 100 or more years sooner. The stop sign came after about 3 1/2 miles, and I turned left. The marker said Pleasant Grove Road. I slowed down and read the markers as I passed each dirt road - Block House Road, Buckeye Road. Someone in an SUV was behind me. I came upon a parking area for a public hunting ground and pulled off. No Strawberry Roads yet.

I went on. Eventually, the road ended with a 2-way fork. There was a building that looked like a town hall or an old Grange building to the left of the fork, and a very clean graveyard directly across the fork with a lot of big, shiny stones and a statue of Mary prominent in the front. Not Quaker. Where did I go now? I decided to turn right, and said to myself, "You should just go back." Just past the right corner of the fork was a dirt road going steeply downhill to the right. The first letter was blackened on both sides. All I could read was "aspberry." My heart skipped a beat. I heard the stones crackle under my wheels as I turned down into a dirt road leading into the woods. I came to another dirt road. Raspberry seemed to cross it diagonally, so on I went. And then it dead ended into another fork, and this time there were no markers.

How silly of me. Dusk was advancing, but it wasn't very dark yet. I was in deep woods now, on a dirt road in remote southwestern PA. I thought, "If I turn right, this road may go back up to Pleasant Grove, and if it doesn't, I'll just turn around and go back the way I came." I drove a little ways, and I saw a chain link fence ahead with no associated buildings. It looked like a graveyard. There was a very tall tree in it, and it was surrounded with tall trees, and there was a sign. A feeling of excitement overwhelmed me. There was lots of parking room, so I pulled to the left, off the road next to the fence and read the sign. It said, "Quaker Cemetery, est. 1700." I was smiling, laughing, tickled with joy as I got out of the car. I opened the gate and went in. There was ivy everywhere. And sassafras trees and poplar trees to my chest, and nettles. And poison ivy. I don't normally get poison ivy, so that wasn't a deterrent. I squatted to look at a partially moss-covered gravestone, and couldn't read the inscription, so I ran my fingers along the letters. I don't remember what it said, just that touching the stone made me feel connected to the people who once made that their spiritual home. I looked around, trying to imagine a meetinghouse there. It could have been anyplace. It could have been where the roads were, or where the tall trees were. The woods were getting dark, and I remembered that there were bears in this part of PA. But I walked around the graveyard anyway. Some of the gravestones were sunken into the ground, and a few of the graves were too. One gravestone was sunken and right against the base of that tall tree, as if the roots had grown around the stone and pulled it down into the ground in a hug.

I thought, "If I fall into a grave, nobody will know where I am." But I kept walking around, wondering that some of the stones were very large and fancy for Quakers in the 1700's. Well, no. Quakers did not become particularly "plain" until the 1800s. Before that, some of them were quite wealthy and prominent. These were prominent farmers, coming up from the deep South, and in from the east, before the Revolutionary War, during the time of slavery and big plantations. They would have been wealthy. They would have known the Indians as friends or Friends; brothers and sisters in Christ, unlike the attitude of most settlers of that time. They were my people from a long, long time ago. Lost in the beautiful woods. They would have liked having ivy and nettles and sassafras growing on their graves.

I took in my fill of the sight, and the smell, and the sounds of the woods. Some big motor was running very far off in the distance, but I could not hear any cars or planes or people. It sounded like a big machine, like a shovel or bulldozer revving, and was very rare and intermittent. Otherwise, it was just very quiet woods. I got into my car, full of fresh air, and went back the way I came. I set the trip odometer each time I turned onto a new road, and jotted down the mileage.

My depression is gone. Ever since that moment, I have felt an indescribable feeling of happiness. I found a Friends Cemetery that is not even on Quaker maps.

Karma

Karma is the faint hope of those who have been taught to not take action on vindictive feelings. Most of my life I thought that people who counted on Karma were just misguided. It isn't that I thought they should take matters into their own hands - not that at all. I just didn't have much faith in "what comes around goes around," actually going around all by itself. Since I was well schooled in the attitude of non-getting-back, I usually sighed, moved on and resigned myself to being whooped.

But I've seen Karma come to pass enough times. I've come to believe in it, sort of. I've learned that some people really do test fate until it strikes them. One way I've seen this happen is in my employment situations. Every employer who has fired me has folded. Not that there are many, but it is true. I like to think that this is because I am a sort of litmus test person for business success. If an employer can't cope with my specific issues, they won't make it. I've never had to take any action in putting someone out of business. I also don't believe there is any Phantom of the Opera watching over me. I think the phenomena of closing businesses is a self-induced Karma of the employer.

There are also the nurses, doctors and politicians who are know-it-alls. They tend to know themselves right out of their jobs.

A few months ago, I wrote to a politician. After I sent the email, I reread it, and it sounded like a threat. I told them the same would happen to them as had happened to others in their shoes who didn't listen to me. It was a philosophical threat though. I had no intention of doing a thing to make anything bad happen to them. I was suprised afterwards that I had come to have that much faith in Karma.

The thing was, what I wrote was true, and I knew it.

Evidence

A towel that hangs in the bathroom was covered with bug debris and spider web bits. Yesterday it was clean. I wondered first if it had been dropped on the floor or dragged about the house and then hung back up. My husband and daughter wouldn't have done that. They would have thrown it in the hamper. My 3 year old is too short to hang it there. Bug debris? I looked up. There, above the toilet, was the light. It is an old-fashioned light with a glass dish that is held on by something that screws in at its base. There was a clear area, where some large bug had buzzed and scattered debris of previous bugs clean.

Two days ago I was startled by an ivory beetle buzzing around my bathroom, after I had gotten naked for the shower. I caught the beetle in a jar and identified it. It was of the ilk of the elm borer, for which purple bags hang about trees all through the midwest. The ivory beetle eats (and kills) hardwood trees. It was enormous, in comparison to the gnats, moths and mayflies that are found in my bathroom in the morning. I concluded it must be bad beetle season. I saw no beetles today, but the debris on my towel and my dislike for that ivory beetle convinced me that a bad beetle was the culprit of such an evil deed.

Evidence is a puzzle. We don't always come to the correct conclusions about what it means, but it takes us closer. We are natural borne hunters. We spent much more of our evolution looking for tracks in the woods than we did shopping for deals at grocery stores. We are hard-wired for curiosity. Perhaps that is why I find books like "Tracker" so engaging, and the nursing field and nursing theory so interesting at times.

My first nursing instructor traumatized me, but she also fascinated me. She could tell what was wrong with someone by looking at them. Painstakingly, she taught me these skills also.

It has come to amuse me when a patient - or an acquaintance - wonders how I know something about them. After 12 years of helping doctors figure it out, I've become fairly good at it. But like all clues, they don't always lead one to the correct conclusion. There are tricky situations that baffle even the smartest or most educated.

Still, a simple "head to toe assessment" done thoroughly can find a book of information about a person. Slightly jaundiced sclera and a bulging right upper abdomen are telltale signs that someone may like their beer, for instance. Trying to get an IV in someone with seemingly good veins, only to have them pop and bleed one after the other is sometimes a pretty good indicator that a person is on a steroid. Going to work is a daily puzzle. It is the craziest part of the day, those morning assessments, looking 5 people over, getting their vitals, writing it into the computer, and then sorting through the slue of doctors bombarding the nurse's station with the most pertinant finds of the day so they can order tests and treatments. It is maddening, but in a hunter-gatherer sort of way, it has come to be something like a fun board game. The object of the game is to get the person better and send them home.