Blackwater Falls

Location: Blackwater Falls State Park, West Virginia

The scenery is gorgeous, the tourists are gone, the weather is perfect, ten deer grazed outside my campsite last night, and I have phone and Internet service. Life is good.

Ohio Oddities

Location: On the road between Columbus, Ohio and Davis, West Virginia

Ohio Oddities:

• In the local IGA, the Sunday football scores are announced on the public address system as the game is being played. The announcement is made by one of the clerks, who, supposedly, might follow up with "Cleanup on aisle 5!" There was no background music piped in, so I'm guessing actually tuning to the radio station covering the game was not an option.
  
• Beer and wine can be sold in grocery stores in Ohio. You cannot buy wine on Sunday in the local IGA, but you can, oddly, buy beer. I discovered this while listening to the clerk announce the Ohio State football scores over the PA. I'm sure the beer/football thing was just a coincidence.
  
• As you walk by the side of the road, you notice that there are a lot of grasshoppers here. They are so plentiful that they look like little fireworks bursts as they jump in every direction to get away from your foot. Most of them make it to safety.

Finding Carlton

Location: Madison County, Oak Run Township, Ohio

Carlton Enzy Gregg -- my great, great, grandfather -- was much easier to "find" than his grandson Carl was, although he still has secrets he is keeping.

Carlton Enzy Gregg (CEG) was born September 18, 1813. Oddly, I am writing this on September 18, his 194th birthday. He was born in Pennsylvania, but came to Madison County, Ohio, with his mother and two brothers in 1829. He bought a grist mill, married several times, and was "generally respected for his good qualities" and was a "staunch democrat." His first son by his second wife, named John, is the father of my grandfather Carl, and the person who purchased the cemetery lots that led me to find Carl.

The Gregg's have left a mark in this part of Ohio. There are numerous cemetery plots in local cemeteries, and the grave markers are large and prominent, indicating the family was not without means. I found two streets named for my ancestors -- a Gregg Road in West Jefferson, and Gregg Mill Road that crosses Oak Run at the place where CEG's mill was located. He is mentioned in several history books, as a mill owner, a township trustee and a township supervisor.

Finding the site of the mill was ridiculously easy -- I located a Map of Oak Run Township in 1875, and there his property was, seemingly carved out of land owned by Eliza Chrisman. So I went on a road trip. The road that used to run to the mill is still Gregg Mill Road although the mill is long gone. If you know a mill was once there, you can still see traces of the mill race.

So here is one of the remaining mysteries: One of CEG's three wives was Rebecca Chrisman, my great, great, grandmother. It seems reasonable to assume that she and Eliza were related and that the property came to CEG because of his marriage. But I can't link Rebecca to Eliza (who was very wealthy, having a quarter of a million in land and property in 1870), and, while I don't have the exact date when CEG built the mill, it seems that it was before he married Rebecca. Rebecca died at age 25, probably in childbirth, and her grave is quite plain. Maybe she was a relative of Eliza, and CEG met her after he was an established millwright. Maybe the name is a coincidence. Maybe the story lies elsewhere.

CEG was married three times -- the first marriage to Adaline lasted 11 months, and ended in her death. There were no children. The second, to Rebecca, was for four years, and they had three children. The third, and longest, was to Winnie and lasted 22 years, and ended with Carlton Enzy's death at age 79. They also had three children. There are some other researchers who have attributed additional Gregg children to CEG by other women, but he was only married these three times. He and Winnie share a grave site on a hill in the country:

I still don't know where John (Carlton's son, Carl's father, and my great grandfather) ended up -- he wasn't in the plots he purchased in Michigan, and I didn't locate his grave here -- but I'm leaving that particular mystery for another trip.

DOVES, Domicile, Tires, and Doggies

Location: Goshen, IN

The Fall Escapade, put on by the Escapees, is now over. An Escapade is like a conference, but everyone comes in (and lives in) their RVs. There are plenary sessions with bad jokes and door prizes, RV safety classes, seminars, crafts, vendors, nightly entertainment, and food. There were hundreds and hundreds of people there, and a lot of them were full timers. I met some amazing people, shared more than one bottle of wine, and made lots of new friends. As usual, I didn't win a single door prize!

I became a DOVE. The DOVEs are one of many special interest groups that the Escapees call "Birds of a Feather" or a BOF. DOVE stands for "Disaster Operations Volunteer Escapees," and is comprised of RVers who assist the Red Cross at disaster sites, usually travelling to the site in their RVs. As a part of being a DOVE, I joined the Red Cross as a volunteer and am in the process of taking the classes I need to be a volunteer.

I got my rig weighed the accurate way. When you pull into a scale in a truck stop, you normally weigh the entire vehicle -- so you don't know how the weight is distributed on each axle. To get an accurate picture of the load on each axle, and the distribution of the weight from side to side, you need to weigh each tire. Much to my delight, all of the weight limits (total weight of rig, total weight of vehicle, combined weight, weight on each axle, and weight on each tire) were all under the maximum, and the weight was distributed properly. Not sure how I managed all of that, but I'm glad I did -- the cause of a lot of accidents and breakdowns is an overweight rig.

I decided that I am going to make Texas my new domicile! Think they'll make me get a ten gallon hat and boots with spurs? Let me know if you find any on Ebay! And I WILL learn to speak Texan, and my practice phrase is: "Howdy, all y'all, did you know you can put your boots in the oven, but that don't make 'em biscuits?"

A lot of people at the Escapade had dogs that travel with them in their RVs (and I might someday, too) -- so they held a doggy parade! All the dogs bring their humans to the parade, where they (usually the dogs, not the humans) sniff and bark at each other, cavort, and generally have a splendid doggy time. Some even dress up, such as Captain Jack Sparrow in the photo to the right. By the way, Captain Jack, unlike his human, was NOT a happy camper.

Now I'm off to the middle of Ohio, where I hope to track down the mill of my great great grandfather, Carlton Enzy Gregg -- after I do laundry, get groceries, have my oil changed, and find a hardware store. Full timing doesn't mean the chores go away! And Carlton has been dead for 115 years, so I don't think he'll mind waiting one more day.