Photos by jcurtis55
INDIANA SPIRIT QUEST #620 "The Inventor"
This quest will bring you to the Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. Crown Hill is the third largest public cemetery in the United States with over 188,000 burials. There are several other caches in Crown Hill cemetery. It would be quite easy to spend a day here. The grounds open at 8:00AM and close at either 5:00 or 6:00PM, depending on the time of year. I would advise you check the Crown Hill web site if you plan on visiting late in the afternoon.
The posted coordinates will take you to a headstone for Richard Gatling and his wife Jemma. Dr Gatling was an inventor of great reknown, with his most famous invention being the Gatling Gun. In all, at his death he held 50 patents. You will need information from the headstone to calculate the coordinates for the final cache location. Here is the information you need:
Richard date of birth - ab/cd/efgh
Richard date of death - ij/kl/mnop
Jemma date of birth - qr/st/uvwx
The final coordinates are N39 48.HON W086 10.DXF
Richard J Gatling
Gatling had a medical degree, but he chose to concentrate on his inventing instead of practicing medicine. Many of his 50 patents were farm related. He invented the propeller at age 21, only to discover that John Ericsson had independently invented a propeller and had patented his first. His invention of a 'wheat drill' was successful and provided him enough income to fully work on his inventions. Previously, he had held jobs as a fisherman, court clerk, storekeeper and teacher to make ends meet.
1876 Version of the Gatling Gun
Gatling's first patent for the Gatling gun was dated November 4, 1862. The patent listed his invention as a machine gun, a name still in use today. Dr. Gatling had noted the large number of soldiers dying from disease and felt if he could invent a gun that could fire many shots that fewer soldiers would be needed, thereby saving lives. The Gatling Gun Company was then formed in 1862 and went into business in Indianapolis Indiana.
The cache container is a pill bottle