Indiana Spirit Quest #93: Roxilla & Zorilla Traditional Cache

Prohibited text edited 8-22-2011

Pioneer Cemetery

The Indiana Spirit Quest series of geocaches will take you to a number of small, rural, historic cemeteries built by Hoosier Pioneers in central/Northeast Indiana. PRAIRIEPARTNERS has set a record for one-day ISQ finds on 10-16-2004 at 55! 92 cacher teams have logged over 1,300 finds.

TOP TEN FINDS

FTF's

2. 16 --Bluegillfisherman
3. 14 --Buddaman
4. 8 --Pinestrail

This leg of the continuing ISQ adventure takes you to Big Indian Creek and the Broxon Cemetery at what used to be called Broxon Corners, now Saturn,(on the maps), in Jefferson Township, Whitley County west of Aboit. There are 132 souls laid to rest here, including Elizabeth Tayler (sic) who was buried here in 1859.

The oldest record we could find was for Martin Braden, died 1845, aged 1 month, 21 days. There are four Broxons buried here, from 1878 to 1997, but among them you will not find James Broxon, who was a Saturn Postmaster, and an Elder of the Christian Disciple Church in 1858.

See if you can find Rueben Hawkins, Co. F ??? IN INF (Civil War) or Mary Akens's (1818 - 1888) epitaph poem: "God in his wisdom has called the boon his love had given and though the body mouldere, the soul is safe in Heaven". And, now you must know that Roxilla Jenkins (1829-1858) and Zorilla Kelsey (1855-1855) have also checked in here.

One of the Pioneers resting here wants you to know a few things: "Samuel Braden, Born in Westmoreland Co. Pa. Mar. 11th 1808 , married Mar. 4th 1830, Emigrated to Whitley Co. Ind. in the fall of 1839".

Weston A. Goodspeed published his "History of Whitley and Noble Counties, Ind." in 1888, so a lot of his anecdotal history is direct word-of-mouth. Here's one of his Jefferson Township tales:

"One of the Indian Trails passed close to Mr. Fairchild's cabin, and these dusky denizens of the forest often visited his house to beg a little salt or meal, or borrow a kettle for their cooking. He always treated them kindly, and in return they would often bring him fish or a piece of venison, and they sometimes stored their hides at his house until they were sold. John McGlaughlin tells an amusing story, to which we will give a place here. When a boy, he was going along an Indian Trail one day, with a man by the name of Ford. Ford thought he would have a little fun at the expense of a party of redskins, which he knew would pass soon, so he tied some of the bushes together across the narrow path, and then they hid to await developments. Soon a party of half-drunken Indians came along on full gallop, and when they came to the place mentioned, the ponies went under, but the riders did not. The reader can easily imagine the scene that followed. Some were seriously hurt; but the perpetrators offered no assistance, and it was some time before they dared to leave their hiding place. The Indians were frequent visitors at the cabins of nearly all the early settlers but were rarely known to steal, and soon left the hunting grounds, where they had roamed so long, to the desecration of the ax and plow."

Check out the neat split rail fence on one side of this old burial ground!NOTE: The Correct location of the cemetery can be seen on the Topozone maps, linked below.

The cache container is a 35 mm film can. BYOP. Park with care. If you find a fallen US flag, please stick it back in the ground. Payton Manning may be on the verge of breaking touchdown pass records in the NFL, but when at Tennessee U., in three tries, he NEVER beat the Gators! Go Urban Meyer!! As you know there is precious little I can do to help you out on the name of the Mystery Dog--you've got to read the logs and figure it out for yourself! As always, please be respectful, and cache in, trash out.

Cache In - Trash Out!

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NIGHT CACHING IS NOT ALLOWED ON ISQ'S