The East Hill Cemetery holds some of the city's "best and brightest" of the 1800s and 1900s, and family members are still interred here to this day. After older burial grounds in Salem became too crowded, thirty stockholders in the newly established Roanoke Cemetery Company purchased these ten acres from the estate of Nathaniel Burwell, an early settler and plantation owner in the area. The lot included land used to bury Confederate soldiers who died during the 1863-64 Winter Encampment, as well as those killed in the 1864 Battle of Hanging Rock.
After the cemetery's establishment in 1869, numerous remains were moved here from small family & churchyard cemeteries across the city.
To find the location of this cache, you will need to take a tour of East Hill Cemetery, visiting the resting places of some notable individuals, and collect information from them. Once found, you will build the final coordinates by finding ten numbers (all between zero to nine). Waypoints on this cache description will guide you to each spot.
A) The first stop on the tour highlights two Historical Markers, at the main entrance to the Cemetery. Find the first digit of the year in which Gen Andrew Lewis fought at Point Pleasant.
B) At the same location, find the third digit of the year in which Sgt. James Walton died.
C) At the Confederate Soldier Memorial, find the last digit of the year in which this memorial was erected.
D) This tomb holds the remains of Thomas Henry Cooper, a West Virginian coal baron who built the Longwood Mansion, which once stood just across Main Street from here. Take the third digit of the year of his birth, and subtract the third digit of the year of his death.
E) Here, locate the grave of David Frederick Bittle, the first President of Roanoke College. Find the engraving that specifies the number of years he served the college in this role, and count the number of letters in the last word in the third line.
F) Here lie a number of the descendants of Nathaniel Burwell, the weathy plantation owner who originally owned this land and much of modern Salem. In this family plot, locate the graves of two of Burwell’s great-grandsons, who both become doctors. Determine which of these doctors died first, and take the third digit of the year of his death.
G) In the same location, find the doctor who survived longest, and take the day of the month of his date of death.
H) Find the year this memorial to General Andrew Lewis was erected. Take the second digit, and subtract the fourth digit.
I) This memorial is to Charles Deyerle, a member of the first graduating class of Virginia Military Institute, who became a US Army surgeon. He served in the Mexican War, and died while stationed in California. A Salem newspaper reporter documented a harrowing two-month long journey by Deyerle’s brother to reach California and transport the doctor’s remains back to Salem for burial. Find the year of death; take the second digit and subtract the first.
J) This small tombstone memorializes one of four known Union Army soldiers buried here. John William Harveycutter served as Union telegraph operator in the Civil War; afterwards he settled here and was appointed to the reconstructionist town council. He proved to be a good selection, as the town re-elected him to the office, and he became a vital part of the post-war community. For the last digit of the puzzle, find his wife’s grave marker (next to his), count the number of letters in her maiden name, and add one.
Now, build a set of coordinates by replacing the letters in this form:
N 37 AB.CDE, W 080 FG.HIJ
You can check your answers for this puzzle on GeoChecker.com.
[Thanks to the research & writing of Norwood Middleton and John D. Long for historic source material.]