For part 1, you are looking for the headstone for my
great-grandmother (or langamma in Icelandic). Her name was Groa
Þorláksson. Groa emigrated from Iceland when she was 19 years
old.
The coordinates for the final cache (ammo can) are:
Latitude: Current latitude minus the third digit of the year
she was born.
Longitude: Current longitude plus the age she was when she
died, plus 23.
Groa died tragically in a house fire. She was trapped in the
upstairs of the home while the stairs and main floor were on fire.
She wrapped her two young boys up in blankets and threw them out
the window into the snow bank below. The window was too small for
her to crawl through however. My grandfather was only 10 days old
at the time and his brother was 2 years old. Her husband was killed
in a construction accident two years later and the boys were raised
by a local family.
Update
It is amazing the things we discover through geocaching, but I
never thought I would discover something like this. I was contacted
a while ago by a woman who had read this cache page and recognized
the story. As it turns out, her Great-Aunt Helen was also affected
by this house fire. After several discussions between her family
and mine, we were able to piece together additional information
about this tragic event.
Apparently Helen had been staying with my Great-Grandmother at
the time to help her with the two young babies since my
great-grandfather was away most of the time for work. Helen was
only about 14 years old at the time.
Helen was the first to wake and smell the smoke. She woke up
Groa and the two of them wrapped the babies and tossed them out the
window to safety. Apparently by this time, Helen's hair had caught
fire, and Groa wet a towel and wrapped it around Helen's head, then
helped her to get out the window as well. Helen scooped up the two
babies and took them to the barn and buried them in the hay to keep
them warm. She tried to go back and help Groa, but there was
nothing she could do. Helen and the boys were later found in the
barn by neighbours. Helen was unconscious at the time due to the
burns she had suffered.
It's amazing that we never knew about Helen, or the role she
played in saving my grandfather and his brother. Helen and the boys
survived the fire, but Helen was left with permanent scars both
emotionally and physically. Thank you Groa AND Helen for your
heroic deeds that day.
