Google Earth Adventure: Dillsboro

It is a snowy Saturday here in Southern Maryland. What better way to spend it then going on a Google Earth Adventure! Since I’ve been in a nostalgic mood, I thought I would take a trip to my Grandma’s house. I haven’t made the full journey there since September 2005. I’ve made the partial journey to different destinations, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen her house.

Let’s see our route!

The Map

Wow, I didn’t realize that we spent 11 hours, probably longer, going to Grandma’s house. I don’t remember it, but my parents tell me that before it took longer because the Interstate didn’t go through where it does now. They had to go into Pennsylvania and come back down from Columbus.

We also split our trip into two days. My Aunt Melinda lives in Southern Ohio and it takes about 8 hours to get to her house. We would usually stop and spend the night with her and then head out in the morning. Of course a trip to Ohio isn’t a trip to Ohio without visiting two more Aunts in New Richmond, Ohio. After that, it is a short trip to Indiana.

I’m cheating and starting in Indiana!

The Lawrenceburg Exit
The Lawrenceburg Exit

There is something about that first exit off the Interstate. To get to Grandma’s we’d have to exit I-275. We are heading toward Lawrenceburg and Aurora, then onto Dillsboro. Even though it’s been over 10 years since I’ve taken it, this exit is as familiar as the trip I take to go grocery shopping today. There’s the relief of almost being to Grandma’s, and then the exhaustion when you realize you still have a half hour to go!

The Parking Lot
The Parking Lot

Is it cliche to say that this parking lot used to look so much bigger when I was younger! From the overhead view, there is a lot less visible from the street then there used to be. The parking lot was used for the customers on the Riverboat Casinos. From the looks of the street view, this parking lot is no longer in use.

Walmart – Oh the times I had in Walmart

Walmart

You can’t tell from the street, but up that hill and around those trees is a Walmart. It’s a pretty big one. It’s also full of so many funny memories for our family. There were times we had to stop and stretch, so we walked around Walmart. There were times that as a cranky, teenage girl I couldn’t take those jeans one more second. That meant a stop at Walmart for some sweatpants.

Most times this Walmart was our last stop to pick up things to take to Grandma’s house. It could be soda/pop, food, or books. Whatever you think you might have needed in the days before the internet and smartphones. Grandma lived pretty far out in the woods, and even the small town of Dillsboro was a bit of a hike to get things. The fun part about Walmart was it was Grandma’s favorite place. More than once when we were stopping to pick things up, we’d run right in to her and Wayne! 🙂

The last familiar sight before our turn!

Walmart

Nine miles from Walmart, you come across this! It’s that last familiar sight before you know you are almost there. I don’t know if anyone else does this, but we have a tradition in our family. On road trips, we designate landmarks to break up the trip. It’s not fun saying you will get there in 638 miles. Instead we’d say, oh Walmart is coming right up. Another favorite is, I know you’re tired but we’re almost to the silos! The silos meant we were about to make our turn into Dillsboro, Indiana!

Dillsboro!

Dillsboro

Oh boy, we finally made it to the Dillsboro turn! Just don’t blink because you will miss the turn. That happened to us more than once after a long trip. Actually, that’s not the turn we take. This is the one that SAYS Dillsboro, but this isn’t the one we take. We take the next, super secret unmarked turn!

The Secret Entrance

This is the entrance we always took into Dillsboro. This way we didn’t have to drive the whole length of the town. It’s a more straight forward route to Grandma’s house.

Genealogy Break: Since I’m a genealogist, I have to point out a few things before we turn into Dillsboro. You might be wondering how Grandma and Grandpa Wayne ended up all the way in Dillsboro (and you haven’t seen the trek to the house yet). Well, Wayne actually grew up in Dillsboro. It’s where his children grew up and live and probably where his parents grew up also. When he retired, he bought a house in his hometown. Dillsboro is also where Wayne is buried with his first wife. If you take a right turn instead of the left into Dillsboro, you’ll head straight into Oakdale Cemetery where Wayne is buried.

Town Square

Technically this isn’t a town square. It’s more of the intersection at the heart of Dillsboro. It’s important to know the other ways into to Dillsboro because when they have their carnival, this intersection is closed off and you can’t drive through at all! Now you know why I mentioned the other entrance. You always have to know these kinds of things, because this was before GPS and Google Maps!

Through the intersection, to the intersection? Huh?

Another Intersection
Another Intersection

When we come to this intersection, we have another choice to make. We can go right, or we can go left. If we go right, we can go to the IGA which is your closest source of groceries once you get to Grandma’s house. If you go left, we’re heading to Grandma’s but we still have a bit of a journey to go. Since this is my Google Earth Adventure and since there are no gas tanks to fill, I’m going to take a peak at the IGA!

The IGA
The IGA

Oh man, that used to feel a lot bigger to me! That seems to be a running theme as I get older. Everything used to be so much bigger. I didn’t think it was possible to miss a grocery store, but I sure do miss that IGA. There are so many memories of it. Probably not as many as Walmart, but plenty of them all the same.

Over the river and through the Woods, To Grandmother’s House we Go!

It was always a running joke in our family that we literally had to go over the river and through the woods to Grandma’s house. Once you finally got to Dillsboro, you thought your journey was over. It wasn’t though, it was just getting started! You still had 5 miles of twisting, turning road to go! This is because technically, Grandma and Wayne lived in a little borough called Farmer’s Retreat. It doesn’t have a post office that I’m aware of, just a Lutheran church and a small park that was our last “landmark” on the trip to Grandma’s house.

I finally made it to Grandma’s house! There it is! Except the trees are blocking the front of the house. Lucky for me, Street View has some older photos of the house.

Here’s the little house I remember from my childhood. It didn’t have internet, cable TV or video games. Grandpa Wayne would wake up with the sun, and then wake you up right along with it. There would be blackberry picking if you were there at the right time of year. There was a back porch that everyone loved and remembers. I don’t just remember my Grandma and Grandpa Wayne here, I remember our whole family here. Cousins, Uncles, Aunts, and Great Aunts. To this day I can remember the exact layout of the house. I can remember the furniture. I also remember the Grandfather Clock that Wayne made for my Mom that sat in the family room. Well, it did until Wayne told Mom she was to take it or he was selling it!

It sure has been bittersweet visiting Grandma and Grandpa Wayne’s house after all these years. I wonder if a house will ever make me feel the same way again. Or will this house always be that house from my childhood, the one I remember with nostalgic fondness.

How I found William Moore in 1875

After looking over my timeline of William H Moore, I became determined to check Brooklyn in the 1875 New York State Census. For me, finding William in 1875 would be a big help. This way I would be able to tell whether he had made it back from Chicago yet. I didn’t like having that huge gap between 1871 and 1880.

The first thing I did was check the Brooklyn city directory for 1875. I figured if I could find William at one of his usual addresses, then my job would be that much easier!

Analysis:

  1. There are two William H Moores in the directory. One is a basketmaker and the other a carpenter. The carpenter makes me happy, but I don’t recognize the address, so it’s going down as my first possibility.
  2. There are 3 other carpenters that are just listed as William Moore. I’ve added them to the list under the other William H Moores. If I find the other two, and still haven’t found my William, then I’ll check them.

My next step was to plot the first William H Moore into Google Earth to see where exactly he was located in 1875. From there I can see how far he was from the later addresses I’ve documented for William’s family.

It might be a little hard to tell in the scaled down version, but Stockton Street is not far at all from William H Moore‘s 1880-1886 address.

My next step was to find out where to start. FamilySearch has the 1875 New York State Census, but not an index. There is a website that has a great list of the 1876 Election Districts of Brooklyn.

Now the hard part comes. I have a little clue in the fact that I have never found William H Moore in a Ward under 20. So I decided to start at the highest ward numbers and work my way backwards.

Ward 25, District 4, doesn’t exactly work. I used the polygon tool in Google Earth to see the area covered by each district. The red thumb tack is where the William H Moore in the city directory is located. With this, I know I can probably jump to another ward, and check to see if that’s a little closer to where I need to be.

So I looked around where I want to find William in the census, and tried to find a boundary street in the district listings that matched. I hit pay dirt in the 21st ward. All the districts in the 21st ward have boundary street combinations of Lafayette Avenue, Nostrand Ave, and Myrtle Avenue.

Jackpot! This is the 21st Ward, District 6. While it took a little while to plot the different districts. I was able to keep them plotted and turned off in Google Earth in case I needed to check them for the other William Moores.

As it turns out, I won’t need to because this is in fact my William on Stockton Street. So I’m now able to confirm another address for William between 1870 and 1880. I also know that his family made the trek between Chicago and Brooklyn sometime between 1871 and 1875. Despite what it says on the census, the three boys were all born in Illinois.

So this is how I found my William H Moore in 1875 without an index to search!

GEA: Prospect Hill Cemetery

Two weeks ago, I visited Prospect Hill Cemetery in Caldwell, New Jersey. This cemetery is most likely overflowing with ancestors of mine. Until I research more, I think I’ve hit the limit of my knowledge of them.

Prospect Hill plot layouts

This is the closest I can come to laying out where my family plots are. They could be slightly off though. We weren’t exactly in the cemetery hunting mode. We were in wedding mode!

Overall I really loved going to this cemetery. The graves were layed out in a very easy to navigate manner. Every grave is actually facing one of the access roads. So there wasn’t a real need to get out of the car unless you wanted to. I walked the whole back half of the cemetery in a very short period and I saw LOTS of names that are familiar to me after so many years of researching Caldwell. I can’t wait to go back when I have more connections to find, or even just to take more pictures for Find a Grave. I will definitely take the advice of Russ from My Tombstone Collection (Thanks for the comment Russ!) and take more pictures of the surrounding areas so I can better determine where the plots were. I did that for some of them, but not all!

Leonard family plot
Lindsley Family marker

For example, I was able to pinpoint exactly where I found the Leonard family and Lindsley plots from this photo. I knew I had spotted the Leonard plot from the Lindsley plot and the Lindsley plot was right along the road.

GEA: Thornhill, Scotland

It’s been awhile since I’ve done a Google Earth Adventure. They’re fun, I need to make more time for them! I’m still in the process of collecting my data for the Menzies family. Just when I thought I was at a stopping point, I found another lead this morning. Never ending! I just have to say I love the FamilySearch indexes. Sure I can’t confirm until I set eyes on the record myself, but since I knew the maiden name of Jennie Menzies-Love’s mother I’m pretty positive about what I’ve found. So thank heaven for the California Death Index listing the mother’s maiden name! Since most of my Dad’s family stayed in New Jersey, I fretted over ever getting my hands on more records. Little did I know a bunch of New Jersey people headed west to California in the 40’s!

Anyway, back onto the Google Earth part. I found that John Menzies and Jane Ferris’ first five children were born in Scotland before the family went south to Liverpool, England. I plugged some search terms into FamilySearch’s Scotland Birth and Christening Records. Voila! I have a place! Morton by Thornhill, Dumfries, Scotland, UK. All five children born in Scotland have Christening records there and John and Jane have a marriage record there. In fact I think I found John’s birth record there too 😉 The only problem I had was that there was no Morton on any maps I looked at. I’ve run across this in the United States though, so I don’t fret too bad.

I started with Thornhill. That still exists. It just so happens there is a Morton Street that runs through the center of Thornhill. So this is where I tried my luck with a Google Earth Adventure. I figured the worst that could happen is I spend another pleasant morning touring Scotland from the comfort of my home… Too bad I was already dressed, pajamas would have made it better! Best case scenario is I’d find a church along the street.

My first thoughts were, “What a quaint little street!” Then as a long time user of Google Earth, I knew I should probably do a 360 view and see what’s around.

Oh. Well, that’s a little anti-climatic. The sad thing is the church had a For Sale sign on it. I wonder how much an old church in Scotland costs? Probably more than I could afford.

For those keeping track of my previous GEA, the very first one was a tour by Castle Menzies. I’m positive I can link my Menzies there eventually.

I’m certainly closer than I used to be! Thornhill is about 2 and a half hours south of Castle Menzies location. Not exactly a day trip in the 1800’s but it’s a lot closer than New Jersey, which is where I was before today.

Well, since my goal was accomplished I might as well keep looking around more, right?

I really do long to visit quaint little towns like this. I just love the buildings.

Full Disclosure: Starting with this picture I switched to maps.google.com. For some reason my Google Earth is messing up so I have to re-install it and see if that will help. I’d rather not talk about it though, I’d rather look at the Scotland buildings.

There much better! I think what I love about looking around Scotland and other countries is how much older the buildings are. I’ve got a million houseplan books that show me what these old houses look like on the outside and the floor plans on the inside, but there’s nothing like seeing a real version of it.

Back to Morton Street. I love how green Scotland is. I know everywhere else is green too. It’s just that everytime I open a random street view in Scotland, it’s just so green!

I really do wonder how old these buildings are.

Then I came across this. I was curious as to what all the busses were there for. A quick Google Search told me this is Wallace Hall Academy. Well not the bus activity, but the building I couldn’t really get a look at. The original Wallace Hall Academy was established in 1723. In 1972 Wallace Hall Academy merged with Morton Academy at Thornhill (!) and they moved to the building they are in now. The revelation got me to thinking about Morton parish again. It’s got to be here somewhere!

When I looked up Closeburn, the original site of the Wallace Hall Academy, I found a little nugget of information.

The hamlet of Gatelawbridge, 2+12 miles (4 km) east of Thornhill, is on the boundary of Closeburn and Morton parishes near Crichope Linn.[1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closeburn,_Dumfries_and_Galloway]

It’s still not on the map, but looking through the street views between all three places (Closeburn, Gatelawbridge, Thornhill) I found a few more churches. So I don’t know which one my ancestors were christened in. I guess I’ll just have to take a real trip to Scotland some day and check them all. It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it!

Disclaimer: Google owns the images I used in the entry. I am making no profit from these images. Please don’t sue me Google, I own nothing of value except for the Mini-Oreos I ate on this trip.

GEA: Brooklyn Cemetery

It’s been quite awhile since my last Google Earth Adventure. I really love playing in Google Earth so I really need to make the effort for more of these!

Today’s adventure came about because I am in the midst of trying to plan a Genealogy trip. My first ever. I did make a trip to the Ohio Historical Society once, but technically my Mom has planned all those trips and I’m never quite prepared for being at these very helpful places. So I’m going to try my best to prepare. If anyone wants to leave tips for me, they would be most welcome! I’m probably going to spend a lot of time Googling.

One of my biggest “wants” is to visit the cemetery in Brooklyn where William H Moore is buried. I’m hoping that will verify some dates for me at the very least. Not to mention, I think it’s been awhile since they’ve been visited. So they’re do for some attention from family.

First thing I have to do is take my cemetery deed and locate where the graves are located. The cemetery in Brooklyn is HUGE to say the very least.

Continue reading “GEA: Brooklyn Cemetery”