Hello from Greenville, OH

Hello from Greenville, OH

Tuesday Morning October 4, 2011 (second travelogue of this trip).

We are camped in the Darke County Fairground campground (map). We planned this stop as a part of a large circle trip including being vendors/presenters at the Bus Conversions Rally in Chattanooga, TN.

If you have been a long-time reader of our blog, you might recall that we stopped here as a part of a trip to an FMCA rally in Bowling Green, OH in 2009. This is the town that Jim's father and grandmother were born in. The blog detailing the information is (here).

Our trip here took a day longer than we had planned. We left Prescott on Wednesday 9/28, planning on driving about 300 mile (half way to Greenville). However after a bit over 100 miles, Pat saw a sign for Fairfield, IA. Her genealogy work had indicated several of her grandmother's relatives were buried there. She had wanted to travel there for sometime, so we made the decision to spend the night there. We were able to find the rather remote graveyard and located the gravestones of her relatives. Two of the gravestones were impossible to read other than the name Miller. Pat called a relative in Iowa and confirmed that both of the grave markers were her ancestors. When asked how they knew, they said that they lucked into visiting the grave just after a hail storm and the markers had been “cleaned” by the hail!

Thursday night we stayed in a Wal Mart in Champaign, IL. We arrived in Greenville on Friday afternoon. Saturday and Sunday we spent some time at the Garst Museum (http://www.garstmuseum.org/home.php). They bill themselves as “Home of the Annie Oakley Center”. Anne was born in a log cabin close to Greenville and is buried in Brock Cemetery in Greenville. Frank Butler, her husband of over 40 years (also fellow showman), is buried beside her. He quit eating after she died and passed away 18 days after she did.

The Garst museum is a wonderful place. It has great exhibits. More importantly, it houses the Darke County Genealogical Society. They have extensive resources.

Prior to our trip, Pat had sent letters to several people with the names Shepherd or Culbertson (Jim's grandmother's maiden name) in Darke county. As a result of one of those letters, we got to meet Rick and Nancy Shepherd. They are great people and we hope that we find that we are related – so far no link yet, but we are both searching. Yesterday they took us on a tour of the Ithaca and Abbottsville cemeteries. We were able to locate several grave sites of Jim's relatives. We will be going back and spending more time at both locations.

That is all for now.