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.
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