As you look at this entry, you are looking at the last of our New York visit and the beginning of our trek west. To see the rest of our New York visit you must go down a few blog entries and begin on June 20.
So, our last day visiting Jed in New York, June 27, was spent Jed taking Ann for a ride in his Vespa.....
.... oops, the day before was spent at church and at an Elders Quorum picnic...
....also, on our last day, we went to see the largest cathedral in the world....
....looked at a couple more condos. Then we bid Jed adieu.
We drove back to our trailer in Hershey PA. We spent the night, and the next day we headed west and spent that night at Camp Wal-Mart. The next morning we headed to Brookville, PA. It is the county seat of Jefferson County. There we spent all morning and early afternoon in the county courthouse and the local Historical Society. We found three wills of three of Ann's ancestors from the area and Ann met a distant cousin on the Snyder/Shaffer side of her family. Fascinating!
We then left and followed the clues we had found and headed towards Ringgold, PA a few miles away where we had learned that some of her ancestors had lived.
It was a very small village. Here is a picture of their shopping mall.
We found two cemeteries in the town and this was the one the info we had gathered led us to.
Up on a beautiful hill was a little Lutheran Church that had been here for about 200 years with a little cemetery down hill from it.
Looking down from the church we saw the beautiful countryside settled by people like Ann's family six generations ago. We saw the cemetery and began our search for her family.
And there we found Ann's family. Four different family names and several generations leading back to.....
Valentine Shaffer, Ann's great-great-great-great-great grandfather.
After finishing taking pictures and notes about 8:30 PM we headed further west and spent the night at Camp Wal-Mart in Clarion PA. The next morning we headed out. On the way to Jefferson, Ohio, we took a turn a little too sharply and punched out our rear window of the truck. This is the 4th time Wayne has done this. Needless to say he had a hard time accepting he had done it again.
We pressed on and passed through several beautiful western Pennsylvania towns and villages before we finally arrived in Jefferson OH.
We set up camp in a Thousand Trails Preserve there where we will get the window fixed, visit with one of Wayne's distant cousins, visit several Cowley cemeteries near Cleveland and rest a little before we head off on July 5 towards the west and more family history research.
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