INDIANA SPIRIT QUEST
Photos by BBsurveyors
The Indiana Spirit Quest series of geocaches will take you to a number of historic cemeteries built by Hoosier Pioneers. In just over a year and a half, the quest has grown to over two hundred eighty caches hidden in twenty-four Indiana counties, and the hiders have grown to eleven cacher teams, most of which are dogs and their humans. Cacher teams have logged over 5,000 finds.
INDIANA SPIRIT QUEST #282
”Confederate Railroad"
Welcome to the Ladoga Cemetery, Clark Township, Montgomery County. This is a large cemetery located just south of Ladoga. There are many graves dating back to the 1830's. It is located in the Northwest Quarter of Section 19, Township 17 North, Range 3 West, Second Principal Meridian of the Public Land Survey System. There are lots of pioneer settlers and veterans buried here. The impressive war memorial is located near the entrance.
This group of 24 Civil War veterans is but a small number of the war veterans memorialized in this cemetery. In this group are 18 Union vets, 3 of which are from the 28th US Colored Troops, and 6 Confederate vets. Four of the rebels share the surname Obenshain, two were drummers and one was a musician. Peter Obenshain's gravestone can be seen in the photo gallery. The Southern Cross near the top of the Confederate gravestone can also be seen in the photo gallery. We found a total of 15 gravestone of Confederate soldiers, many of which have adjacent gravestones for their family members. We were told by a local genealogist that these southerners moved here while working on the railroad.
Elizabeth Myers was the first person buried in this cemetery. She died September 8, 1833.
Revolutionary War veteran Jonathan Byrd is memorialized here. Lots of his heirs are buried near this stone.
Here is Joseph Smith of the 28th US Colored Troops. The 28th was organized at Indianapolis from December 1863 through March 1864. They were involved in several skirmishes in Virginia including the seige against Petersburg and Richmond. They ended the war in Texas and were mustered out November 8, 1865
Here lies Robert Harrison, assistant surgeon with the 120th Indiana Infantry. A truly gruesome job, I'm sure. The 120th was organized in Columbus Indiana and saw service in Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina and Washington, D.C.
Captain Pollard Baldwin served our country in both the War of 1812 and the Mexican War. He was born January 22, 1799 in Cavendish, Vermont and died in Ladoga in 1858. The War of 1812 was declared against England on June 17, 1812. Hostilities ended December 24, 1814. Several battles were fought in Indiana.
Update August 30, 2015 - The cache container is a round quart-size container.
"Indiana Spirit Quest" is brought to you by the following fellows of GEOISQ*: The SixDogTeam, Kodiak Kid, THE SHADOW, Team Shydog, Rupert2, Torry, ~Mystery Dog~, Team Tigger International, Cache Commando, BBsurveyors and DoverDuo."