July 3 was the 4th and final day ride. This time I was headed to the southeast corner of Auglaize County, Ohio, where the Virginia Military Tract butts up against the lands of the rectangular survey. The county maps showed a road that followed part of the boundary. That was my main destination. It’s another one of those bits of history that left a mark on the landscape, and I wanted to have a look.

I got a fairly early start – not even taking time to make coffee and oatmeal. I ate a grocery-store granola bar that Myra gave me, and said I’d save the other one to eat on the way. Then I forgot it in camp. So I was hungry by the time I got to Rockford 20 miles later. But at the point shown in this photo, I didn’t yet realize it. It’s at the Indiana-Ohio border. Teasels were in the roadside ditches all over.

I don’t recall seeing any more Amish farms once I crossed into Ohio. The political subdivisions can be important to these people, depending on local laws in one jurisdiction or another. It’s not as though there aren’t a lot of Amish in Ohio, but here it seems that for whatever reason, around here their farms go no further east than the Indiana border.

replaced photo, 24-jun

It was along this road that I saw Amish homesteads with unkempt lawns and houses that needed painting. Later Myra told me she learned it was because the local bishops wouldn’t let people paint their houses. But that is changing.

At the end of this road, across the river, I passed two Amish boys — about 12 years old I’d say — rollerblading along to some destination. I’m not sure what that destination was, because there weren’t many Amish places on the south side of the river. It took me a long time to catch up with them and pass them. They later passed me while I was on a photo break, and then I caught up with them and passed them again. As I caught up to them the 2nd time they pulled off into somebody’s front yard and watched me as I rode by. I complimented them on how well they had been moving. They didn’t say anything, but they looked pleased.

When they are old enough to join the church, they will have to give up their rollerblades and bicycles. That’s the practice here. Further to the northwest it’s different. There one can sometimes see adult Amish people on bicycles.

I rode mostly on the St. Mary’s side of the Wabash River. The terrain here is mostly flat, much of it very flat. This view from an old schoolyard is a small sample. I never got near my granny gear for the entire four-day outing.

Here’s another view of the school.

More flatness. I got to see a lot of the wheat harvest over the four days, starting here, near Bluffton. (The Amish version of the harvest looked a little different than this.)

I thought the barn in the distance was the most likely place where the Allen Norcross farmstead had been. I learned a couple of days later that it may not be that simple. But when he died in 1879, Norcross owned some of the land seen here.

I rode up and down the streets of Murray, looking for the cemetery. It didn’t take long, but I had no luck. But people were out setting up their holiday barbecues, so I found people to ask. The first person said he was too new in Murray to know where there is one. The second person pleaded newness, too, but gave me directions to a cemetery north of town, even though he hadn’t yet learned the road and street names.

I had no luck finding the Allen Norcross gravestone, but later I learned where it was. I don’t have a good excuse for missing it. The ride ended here, though. Myra came and joined me in the search, and then we drove to the site of one of the other early settlers who had also fled at the time of the Black Hawk war. Then we got a bite to eat. All in all, it was fine for a starter ride. In the evening there were 4th of July fireworks at the campground.

Even though the place was called Amishville, I didn’t expect it to have much to do with the Amish. I was wrong.

Here is where we camped, right next to an Amish horse pasture. The first night, after we went to bed, we found out that the field off the photo to the right, immediately behind the tent, was being used as pasture, too. A horse surprised us when it came grazing within a couple yards of the tent.

We’ve had a long-running joke about how we always end up camping close to train tracks. But it’s not always a funny joke. Myra doesn’t like it when the trains keep her awake at night. Sometimes they are even too much for me.

So we checked the maps ahead of time for train tracks near Amishville. There is one a couple of miles away, along US-27, but we came anyway, and we didn’t hear any trains at the campground.

However, we did hear horses. Sunday night, about five minutes to midnight, I heard the sound of horse hooves on the asphalt behind the Amish house in the background. I’m used to the sound of horse-drawn buggies when I’m riding in Amish country, especially on Sunday afternoons. I guessed that a young man had been visiting his girlfriend and had barely beat a midnight curfew. But a few minutes after midnight, as I was turning in, I thought I heard another buggy.

Myra reported the next morning that the buggies had been going all night — that they had kept her awake until 2 or 3 a.m. I thought she must have been exaggerating about how late they had been out, but we were both curious about what had been going on. After all, these people get up in the morning well before sunrise. Myra later learned that this is typical, and that there was no exaggeration. Sunday is the free day for the young people, and they’re out having a good time until the wee hours of the morning, even if they have to get up at 5 a.m. to do chores.

I had long noticed that as you go from west to east in northern Indiana and southern Michigan, there is a continuum of more liberal to more conservative Amish. On the west end, in Elkhart County, Indiana, and St. Joseph County, Michigan, you see a bit of color in children’s clothing and on the houses. You see electricity use in outbuildings (though not in the houses). There are phones in little booths out near the roads. On a Saturday in St. Joseph County you can see boat trailers pulled behind the buggies to the lakes for fishing. The boats may have small outboard motors. You see less of that as you go further east into Hillsdale and LaGrange counties. There the clothing and houses are more conservative, and you see less use of motorized or electrical implements.

I hadn’t realized that this trend extrapolates to the area south of Fort Wayne. The most obvious sign is that the buggies are open. Covered buggies are too luxurious for these Amish. And here at Amishville, near the Wabash River, these conservative people are even more conservative. When out riding I had noticed some Amish houses that needed painting and that the yards were unmowed. The gardens looked great, though. Myra learned that that’s not because these people are slacker-Amish. It’s because the bishops wouldn’t let people paint their houses. But some of the non-Amish locals had noticed that things were changing, that people were making their homes look nicer than before. And they were told at the Amishville house that it’s true, the bishops have been relaxing these restrictions.

Myra also heard talk in Berne and at Amishville that a covered buggy had recently been seen in the area. The non-Amish locals were wondering if that was a sign of more changes to come, or whether it was just a visitor from further west.

About the bike rides:

Day 1 was a 30-mile ride to Murray, where Allen Norcross and other early settlers had fled the area during the Black Hawk war.

Day 2 was a 70-mile ride to the south end of Randolf County, along the line of the 1809 Treaty of Fort Wayne.

The first part of day 3 was spent at the library in Bluffton, where I looked for more information on Allen Norcross and the early settlers (and had a successful wild goose chase in the newspaper archives, too). Then I did a 36 mile ride that took me from Murray to Decatur and then back to the campground.

On day four I rode 77 miles to the far end of Auglaize County, Ohio, to a point where the land of the rectangular survey system butts up against the Virginia Military Tract.

More about these later.