Ever have one of those days when it just feels great to be alive? This was one of those days. Wes was working on her flower bed, so I took the bike and headed up onto the South side of New Vineyard mountains. This area is full of history, first settled by people from Martha’s Vineyard to escape being impressed into the British Navy by passing British ships it was well settled for many years but do to the lack of water power, the steep climb to get out of the valley and the remoteness of the area the settlement did not last and today the area has reverted to forest but is dotted with old foundations and stonewalls. This is a great time to visit this area. Until the leaves open it is easy to find these historic homesteads.
I went up the old Hiram Norton Rd. to the height of land where the road crests and heads down into the valley. I was surprised to see old foundations and dug well not far from where the road crests. (See pictures)
In the late 70’s I was hired to find the old property lines on 12,000 acres in New Vineyard by the Smith and the Avery families. These were the descendant’s of Harry and Arthur Smith. While some of the land had been bought by Harry some by Arthur and some by the company. The lines had been cut out when logged when the brothers owned the land but the descendant’s now wanted the lines reestablished. With my background of mapping and my familiarity with the registry from my forestry and Real estate background it was a good fit and at times in was quite interesting.
For instance;
One time when I was running lines on the north side of the mountain following a compass course I found some old flat stones and impressions in the earth. On closer observation I found inscribed on one stone AE 43 meaning it was a headstone and I had found an old cemetery. That night I called the old cemetery asso. And told them. They said they had been looking for that cemetery for years and there was a woman on the coast that would be very interested in it. About an hour that woman gave me a call. She said an individual had removed all his relatives to the Notch cemetery so the impressions in the ground were empty graves. The stones that were still there were people who had not been removed.
Armed with this knowledge the following day I went back to the cemetery to check out the impressions to check it out. I jumped into one of the impressions and stomped but instead of sounding like solid ground it sounded hollow. So I reached down cuffed some leaves to the side and found myself staring at a bone sticking strait up about 6 inches from my face. As you can imagine I was out of that hole in about a second with my heart and adrenalin redlining. After I calmed down a bit I took a second look at the hole and the bone turned out to be a deer antler. Turned out some farmer had refilled the holes with trash, old shoes, cream separator, brass bell etc. Needless to say I haven’t jumped in any empty graves since then!