The old hometown

Edwardsville main street looking east toward Wilkes Barre and the Susquehanna river

The inside of the Welsh Congregational Church of Edwardsville, PA. The wood ceiling and balcony are especially beautiful, I think. It still has the same organ pipes it had back when the Edwards family lived there and Jay played on the organ once in awhile whether he was supposed to or not.
This is the Welsh First Congregational Church where the Reverend J. Edgar Edwards was the pastor for three years. On the right is the parsonage where they lived. Jay's room was on the back and had a balcony of his own but has been since closed in.

We went to Easter Services here. After the services, a couple people approached us to wish us happy Easter and talk to us. When we gave them our names and told them why we were in Edwardsville... and in that church in particular. They asked if Jay's dad was J. Edgar Edwards and said he had married them. They called another woman over and told her who Jay was and she said his dad had married HER. they were really excited about us being there.

It was pretty funny because they also remembered Jay and made some comment about what you always hear about preacher's sons. They asked Jay which son he was and wondered if he was the oldest. He admitted he was and they sort of dropped the subject. Which gave me a clue that they might be remembering him when he lived there. They couldn't have been too far off because the first thing he said when we were walking in past the cast iron picket fence he told me it was possible to climb over it and showed me exactly where to place your foot to get over it without being impaled on it.

It was really interesting walking around town with him because he had so many memories of the place from back when he was in 5th grade about 10 years old and moved there in 1954. They lived there for three years so he was in 7th grade and 12 or 13 when they moved away. He became pretty independent and adventurous while there, riding his bike everywhere and going around town freely with his friends.

He had a lot of memories he re-remembered as we walked and drove around town and the area. So much came back to him, the porch he hid under with a friend while his mother searched all over town for him, the bar he went into with another kid to sing for quarters so he could get money for some fund drive the church was having, the Baptist Church he went to vacation bible school at.

Gettysburg... What a tragic place!!!!

Day before yesterday we drove to Gettysburg, which is only 25 miles south of Carlisle,PA, where we've been camping. Well, actually, we've been camping in a state forest about 10 miles northwest of Carlisle called Doubling Gap. Gettysburg is an old town that was visited by a huge bunch of confederate soldiers and Union soldiers in July 1-4, 1863. Cemetery Hill is apparently where a lot of the action took place and 1000's of those visitors died. The Union soldiers that were killed there are now buried there. There are plaques and statues all over the cemetery and surrounding hills telling about the different groups from different states that fought there and the battles that were fought and how many died, were wounded and were captured. New York lost the most men, over 1000.
Abraham Lincoln gave his Gettysburg one minute speech there in November 1863, in the cemetery, although, now that I think about it, it probably wasn't a cemetery at the time. Well, maybe it was... because they apparently buried all the dead soldiers right away. There was some confusion about what to do with so many dead men. Especially the confederate ones. I guess a lot of the soldiers pinned their name and address to their shirt. Not a happy place. Because all those plaques telling about the battles and the results made what happened there very real.
We are now in Ohio at Dan and Joan's house.

Camping in the Cumberland Valley

It poured rain on us all last night and all the rivers are running high and out of their banks. Maybe that will mean that Jay can take a day off from fishing and we can do some sightseeing!!! Anyway, we are headed for Gettysburg today... after we finish our espresso here in this nice coffee shop on the Carlisle town square across from the old court house where the confederate army shot a hole in one of the pillars on the front so it's a little pitted there still. It seems a little far north for the confederate army to be fighting, but I guess they were looking for one of their generals or something and got lost.

This is a picture of the court house and the battered pillar.

Sorry, sorry, sorry!

I know I haven't been writing and posting anything, even though we've been on the road... oh... I don't know... was it the 21st??? Anyway, we saw sandhill cranes.
I need to remember how to do this blog thing since it's been since Miami that I last blogged. I was going to put up a picture of the cranes we saw in Nebraska but then remembered that the first picture I put up is the last in the blog.
We are in Pennsylvania right now. What a place!!! It's so different!!! Their fields don't have fences for one thing. We can't figure that out. What is growing there. It just looks like grass. This place is OLD! Right now I'm sitting in a coffee house in a town called Carlisle. Have you ever heard of it? We hadn't. It's just where the interstate has the nearest exit to Mechanicsburg where the Eckels are all buried in Pennsylvania. This town is really a surprise. It's about the size of Laramie with a small college, which, by the way, is the FIRST college built in the United States. it seems like every other building had George Washington in it doing something. This building I'm sitting in, called Blaine House originally, was visited by George Washington in Oct. 4-11, 1794 while mustering an armed force to quell the whiskey rebellion in Western Pennsylvania.
The buildings all over the countryside are really old, big two story rectangular stone or brick. The barns are huge with 3 or 4 silos next to them. I'll try to remember to take a picture of some examples. It's very steep and hilly with deciduous forests covering the hills. We are camping in a state forest outside of Carlisle. today we will be going to Mechanicsburg to find the Silver Spring Cemetery where about 30 Eckels are buried, including 4 of our ancestors. The first Eckels to come to this country about 1744, Charles Eckels, is buried in a cemetery about 20 miles away but it's a really old cemetery and the headstones are too worn to read. His son Nathaniel, who was born on the boat coming over, in 1744, is buried at Silver Springs, or at least has a plaque there placed by the DAR because he was a revolutionary war soldier. His son William is buried at Silver Spring Cemetery, with his wife Jane Starr. So that is what we will be doing later today. Our ancestor, William and Jane's son, James Starr Eckels moved to Princton, Ill in 1857 so that's all the Eckels ancestors that were around here.
Jay just came back with a smug smile on his face so apparently he saw some pretty good stuff while he was exploring around town while I blogged. I'm going to download some pictures and take my camera to go see what there is to be so happy about. It has to be good since he's such a history buff and wouldn't get excited with just anything!