“Roots”
by Alex Haley
Published in 1976
Roots are your ties to people and places. They keep you grounded as you grow and things change around you. From geocaching, we have learned that even if you aren't aware of them, your roots are always in place just waiting to be discovered. To our amazement we have placed a cemetery cache that featured an interesting story about one of the people buried there, only to find out over four years later that Scratchy was directly related to that person. This cache is located at Bryan Cemetery outside of Centerville Indiana (and yes, Scratchy has a few forefathers that she knows of buried here too).
The town of Centerville is about to celebrate its 200th anniversary and revisit its roots. Like many of the towns in Wayne County, Centerville has had an interesting and colorful past. The land once belonged to the Miami Indians and was settled by Quakers from Carolina and Virginia. From 1818 to 1870 it served as the county seat, however Richmond ultimately surpassed Centerville in population, business and tax revenues so there was a demand to move the seat to Richmond. Centerville stopped Richmond's efforts to move the county records twice. Once with locked gates and security guards and finally by firing on their own courthouse with a three-pound cannon loaded with iron scraps when Richmond guards were brought into the courthouse to secure the records. When the guards refused to leave, the cannon was fired, the courthouse door was blown off its hinges and the guards were forced to beat a hasty retreat. Soldiers were brought in the next day to move the records to Richmond, and Centerville's tenure as county seat came to an end. The holes from the cannon shot are still visible over the door of the old courthouse, now the Center Township Library.
Cache is hidden away from graves and searches should be limited to daylight hours only.
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This cache is part of the Decades of Discovery series placed to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Morrisson-Reeves Library. It is part of a series of eight, caches each themed around a book or movie, that will take you to unique places throughout Wayne County, Indiana. Enjoy this cache as you would any other...or find all eight, sign the logs, get the secret codes and you will be rewarded with a commemorative metal "token" for completing the series. To claim your prize, send the codes and your mailing address to the cache owners. Limited number of tags available - only one "token" awarded per cache team. Once the "tokens" are all gone, we will remove this information from the pages.
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