Serendipity

 It all began last spring when Ward and I took a driving trip south. At the last minute, I grabbed The Pioneers by David McCullough to listen to along the way. I had no idea what it was about but knew that his books were usually interesting. The Pioneers chronicled the settlement of the Northwest Territory with a focus on its first town Marrietta, Ohio. It was an interesting discovery for me to learn that Marrietta played such an important part in our country's history. My parents and most of my relatives grew up on the other side of the Ohio River in West Virginia, across from Marrietta. Having some personal knowledge about the place we were hearing about in the book made it all the more captivating for me.  

Jump forward a few months to last weekend when Ward, my sister, and I went to a family reunion in WV. Guess where it was? Across the river from Marietta! And we stayed in Marietta. (Turns out that the hotels are cheaper there than across the river.) And one of the local museums had an exhibit on The Pioneers. 

After a 6-hour trip, we arrived in time to visit the Campus Martius Museum. The museum was built around the original house of Rufus Putman. Putnam led the first party of white settlers into the NW territory in 1788. Amazingly, many of the original parts of the house were still intact. 

This was the land office of the NW Territory and is the oldest building in the Territory. The NW Territory later became Onio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. Unlike Putnam's house, this building was relocated to the grounds of the museum.

Much of the museum was too dark for decent pictures, but I did get this picture of a more recent artifact - the first draft copy of The Pioneers book.

After the museum and dinner with friends, we went to the cemetery where my parents and many of my relatives were buried. It was a time of mixed emotions as I remembered my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins who have passed.

The next morning, we had a little time before the reunion picnic, so we visited The Mound Cemetery in Marietta. The name came from the prehistoric, 30' high burial mound built by people of the Hopewell culture sometime between 100 BC and 500 AD. 

The early settlers preserved the mound by building a cemetery around it in 1801. The Mound Cemetery has the highest number of Revolutionary War officers buried there of any place in the country. We learned about Dr. Hildreth and his son at the museum yesterday.

We also took a pleasant walk along the river.

Along the walk, we discovered this tree carving of one of the pioneers. It was done by Perl Totman, who was 85 years old when he created it.

The tree had been destroyed by the emerald ash borer,
which made it difficult to carve.

Then it was on to our family picnic. Since I can't show you pictures from this year's reunion for privacy reasons, here's an earlier one. I had 10 more cousins born after this picture. The crowd is small these days, but it's always good to connect with family.

Our trip was a whirlwind 36 hours, but a good one (except for the no-visibility rainstorms on the way home). We got to experience history in a whole new way. First, we got to know the pioneers intimately by reading the book about them, and then we got to actually see where they lived and died. It's not often that I have gotten to experience history like that, and I found the whole experience exhilarating.

Until next time...