*** CACHE IS NOT HIDDEN AT POSTED COORDINATES. ***
STAGES 1-3: Please be respectful of this location and considerate of the nearby neighbors. NO NIGHT CACHING.
STAGE 4: You're just gathering a bit of info so even if you happen to come here during a high-muggle-activity time (and it will be immediately obvious if that's what you've done), it's OK. Take a minute to get the info, and enjoy some small-town fun while you're at it.
STAGE 5: There are times when you might run into muggles; just use your common sense. The person who is in charge of this place gave permission for the cache to be here.
A BIT OF HISTORY
A local business owner enjoys my caching stories and wanted to have a cache near her shoppe. I agreed to make it happen. I quickly brought setter55 into the mix to assist me. While we eventually determined that the area close to her shoppe was not going to work for hiding a cache, we noticed something you see quite often on old buildings but don't normally take much interest in. It got us wondering about the history of that particular building. Setter55 did some genealogy research, I hit the books at the library and did some online searching, and I enlisted the help of the town historian. When we found out where the likely namesake and/or some of his family are currently "located," the idea of turning this into a multi-cache was born. The shoppe makes a cameo in this multi-cache, but the final is hidden somewhere else (but at an appropriate place for curious folks, as geocachers tend to be). Little did this family know that nearly 100 years after their surname appeared on a building, some folks would see it and make them a part of this crazy hobby called geocaching.
At Stages 1-3, you will be gathering information to complete the set of coordinates that will take you to Stage 4.
Stage 1 - Barney & Roxey, and their daughter-in-law Julia (two headstones at the given coordinates). Interestingly, I could not find any information on where the married couple's son Benjamin is buried.
A = 2nd digit in the day of Barney's birth
B = 3rd digit in the year of Julia's death
C = 2nd digit in the year of Roxey's death
D = 3rd digit in the year of Julia's birth
Stage 2 - Barney, the infant son of Julia & Benjamin. His first name is the most prominent on his headstone.
E = Number of letters in his first name OR in his last name.
Stage 3 - Ira & Mattie, son and daughter-in-law of Barney & Roxey. Ira is also the younger brother of infant Barney from Stage 2, and brother-in-law of Julia from Stage 1.
F = Count the number of times the letter "T" appears
G = Count the number of times the letter "R" appears
H = Count the number of times the letter "P" appears
I = 4th digit in the year of Mattie's death
Plug the above answers into this set of coordinates and then drive to Stage 4.
N 43 A E . B C D
W 078 D F . G H I
Stage 4 - village center
There is a parking lot here, which is the best place to park for this stage. It's a very short walk to the coordinates you obtained from your excellent work in Stages 1-3. Face NW and look across the street and up. Do you see a now-familiar name atop one of the buildings? There's a year with that name, too. Here's the info you need from that sign:
J = 2nd digit in the year
K = 4th digit in the year
L = 3rd digit in the year
M = 4th digit in the year minus 1st digit in the year
Now combine your answers from Stage 4 with your answers from Stages 1-3, and plug those numbers into the coordinates below to find out where the cache is hidden!
N 43 L E . K K J
W 078 D F . I I M
Stage 5 - final
It's a short drive or an easy walk from Stage 4 to the cache location. If you happen to time it right, you might learn something while you're there. It is not necessary to trample any landscaping to find the final! Good luck, and I hope you had fun in this nice little community. If you've been here before but you were only driving through to get from points south to points north (or vice versa), I hope you have a chance to take a look around today. One of my favorite things about geocaching is when I end up in a small town I’d either never been to before or that I’d only driven through on my way somewhere else, but thanks to the cache hunt, I end up finding a great place for a meal, getting a history lesson, or browsing neat shops.
You may check your final coordinates in certitude before searching:
You can validate your final coordinates with certitude. (Checker was added to page on 4-4-2021.)