Zoller elveszett szerelem. Újra találkozunk. Multi-Cache

Fifteen years ago I (papa-K) was a member of Boy Scout Troop 260 in Castlewood, Virginia. I was a senior in high school and had enlisted in the United States Marine Corps with a ship out date of August, 2000.

Before I graduated I intended to become an Eagle Scout. A major requirement for Eagle Scout is to take charge of a project that helps your community. For my project I chose to tackle a cemetery that had been neglected for decades and had all but been forgotten.

It was mainly used by Hungarian coal miners and their families from the local mining town of Dante, Virginia just up the road. Dante at one time was a major coal camp in the local area, but has now mostly deteriorated from its once glorious days.

Here are some articles concerning the project that was undertaken from local papers.

This one is from the Clinch Valley Times on August 12, 1999

and this one is from the Bristol Herald Courier on December 4, 1999

I spent about nine months working the project, but I turned 18 before it was finished. It was intended that another scout going for Eagle Scout would eventually pick up where I left off and finish the restoration.

That was fifteen years ago now and sadly the Scout Troop 260 has since been disbanded and the cemetery is back in the shape it was before we started. I have thought long and hard about this place since we started caching in August of 2012, but had never come up with a good idea to incorporate it into the geocaching community in a way that would tell the story of this place that really needed to be told.

That was until not long ago when everything just fell into my lap. I am sure that by now you have been wondering, “what does a grave marker in Louisiana have to do with a cemetery in Virginia?”

Well this is where the story got very interesting for me.

Out of the blue one day I received an e-mail from a fellow cacher by the name of bruhasz. He asked me if I knew about the Hungarian Cemetery in Dante. Of course I did, and I had the newspaper clipping from the Bristol Herald Courier. Well, he had the article from the Clinch Valley Times that I didn’t have, so he sent that to me. He told me that I was the only person that he had contacted so far, trying to find out information about the cemetery in Dante.

As if it wasn’t interesting enough already it turned out that one of the people buried in Dante was his Great Grandfather Janos Zoller. He was a coal miner in Dante and had died from Black Lung. Also buried here are his daughters Maria and Margaret.

After Janos died bruhasz Great Grandmother Jolana moved from Dante, Virginia to Albany, Louisiana where she lived until she died. She is now buried in the St. Margaret Catholic Cemetery in Albany where this cache starts.

Here are some pictures of Janos and Jolana along with some of their family.

The idea behind the cache was a collaboration between the-k’s and bruhasz with the intent to reunite Jolana and Janos in a symbolic way while at the same time bringing people to this forgotten place of rest.

Below is a picture of Janos and Jolana’s tombstones along with Maria’s and Elizabeth’s. The dates have been scrubbed from some of them in the photos because they will be needed to find the final stage with the log book.

The name of this cache is in Hungarian and is loosely translated to English as meaning.

Zoller’s Lost Love. We Will Meet Again.

Before you start on this journey you should know that the first and final stages are about 650 miles apart as the crow flies. This isn’t expected to draw a large crowd of cachers, but it should definitely be a worthwhile trip if you choose to undertake it.

If you would like to learn a little bit more about the family history than take a look in the cache pages photo gallery at the photos labeled Genealogy 1-4. Your first stop will be at the coordinates posted. Here you will find the head stone of Elizabeth Yuhasz. She was the daughter of Jolana (Helen) and Janos Zoller. Information from her head stone will be used to find Helen Zoller’s head stone.

A= Last number in the year she was born
B= The month she was born minus the month she died
C= The month she was born plus the month she died
D= Add the two numbers together that are the day she was born
E= The day that she died minus 14
F= The third number in the year she died
G= Add the last two digits together from the year that she was born

Once that is solved you should have the coordinates to Helen’s grave, you should go there and look directly to the right of her.

Here you will see another head stone. Above the name is an inscription with the following initials. The initials are for the inscription, not the name.

A= Number of “E’s” on the head stone minus one (use only the front for all of these)
B= Number of letters in the last name
C= The day of birth
D= Age divided by 10 (whole number only)
E= The month of death minus 3
F= Number of letters in the first name
G= Number of “Y’s” on the head stone
H= Number of “P’s” on the head stone

Once you believe you have the coordinates to Janos’ grave you can plug them into this GeoChecker to see if you are right. This will give you the parking coordinates for the next stage as well as the instructions for what to do once you get there.

A= The month he was born divided by 4
B= Multiply A by 2
C= Subtract 1 from B
D= Add 4 to C
E= Subtract 1 from D
F= Divide E by 4
G= Subtract 1 from F

This will give you the coordinates to Maria’s grave. You won’t have to use her headstone to solve for anything because it is hard to read due to the weathering that it has endured and it is written exclusively in Hungarian. However, it is vital to the meaning of this cache to at least visit it. So please take a moment to stop by here.

In order to find the final stage of this cache with the physical container and the log book that must be signed in order to claim a find you will have to go back to Janos grave and solve for one more letter. The rest of the letters you should already have after solving the puzzle for Maria’s grave.

H= In the year that Janos was born, subtract the second number from the third number

You should now have the coordinates that you need to sign the log book and claim the find.

We will ask one more thing of you that is not necessary to claim a find. Margaret Zoller, another of the Zoller children is also buried in this cemetery, but it is unknown where her grave is. If you happen to run across it, than please send me a message with the coordinates to her grave. Please do not post coordinates to the cache page.

If you read the hint carefully than it will make sense once you are at ground zero