(Sep 27, cont.) One of my maps had led me to believe there would be a cemetery by this church in Boundary City. I was looking for the grave of Caroline (Hawkins) Clark, thinking it might be in any cemetery between here and Portland. Caroline Hawkins was about nine years old when her family came to Jay County. She described it this way on the first page of her published reminiscences:
My father was John J. Hawkins. He was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, September 25th, 1789, and was a soldier in the war of 1812, and served three years. My mother was also born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, June 4th, 1789. Her name ‘was Nancy Sellers Hawkins. I am their youngest child and was born in Eaton, Preble County, Ohio, October 10th, 1820. My father moved to Jay County in 1829. We started to move the 1st day of March and arrived in Jay County the 8th. It took us eight days to travel fifty miles from Eaton, Ohio, to Jay County. We got to Greenville, Ohio, the 4th of March, the day that General Jackson was inaugurated president, 1829. The men were marching around a hickory pole with fife and drums. I asked my father if it was the 4th of July, and he said it was in honor of General Jackson. I have since learned that it takes the hickory poles to reach the public crib. Our nearest neighbor was ten miles away. The Indians were plenty for three years after we came, then the government moved them west of the Mississippi. My playmates were little Indian girls. We shot with bows and arrows, ran races and rode the ponies. We had no house to live in when we came to Jay County. We built a half-faced camp by a big oak log and lived in it six months before we built our cabin. The first thing we done after we got here was to make a brush fence back of the big log to pen our sheep in at night. Well, the very first night the wolves came and killed four of the sheep, and don’t you think we only had fourteen dogs. I will tell you there names. There was Cay, he was dady’s deer dog; there was Cuff and Ring and Rover,…
The above is an image from archive.org of the first two of her 5 pages of reminiscences that were published in “Reminiscences of Adams, Jay, and Randolph counties,” a collection that was compiled by a Mrs. T.A. Lynch in 1897 as part of a project to raise money for a cemetery. For some reason I especially enjoy these reminiscences of oldsters telling of their childhoods. This is one of several instances where arrival in a new country at age 10 (give or take) seems to have made a vivid and lasting impression. So far I know of no way to connect this story to the Black Hawk war, but it’s a settlement-era story from that time, so that was a good-enough excuse. Besides, I had ridden to Boundary City a couple of times previously (2000, 2007) and had liked the country well enough to want to come back just to see it again. I wasn’t off to a good start on the cemetery search, though. I couldn’t find a cemetery behind the church. Some people were out behind the house next door, though, enjoying a Sunday evening beer. They didn’t know of any cemetery behind that church, but they told me of the locations of other local cemeteries, most of which I had already marked on my maps. I asked about the name Hawkins. Were there any Hawkins still living around here? They didn’t know of any, but one of the cemeteries was the Hawkins Cemetery. It was one of those they had been trying to tell me about — the one to the north. Ah! I hadn’t known that was the name of it, but for some reason I had long ago marked it on my maps as the most likely location of Caroline’s grave. I told them that from the maps it looked like it was on private property, way back from the road. They told me that was right — it was on a farm place off the road — but I could get to it.
So I decided to skip the other cemeteries close to Boundary City and go straight to the Hawkins Cemetery. Before leaving, I stopped to take a photo of the street sign that says Treaty Line Road, as I’ve done each of the other times I’ve been to Boundary City.
Oops. Almost forgot the googlemap.
