The Spokesrider

The stop at Pipeline road was towards the end of my Monday ride (October 8). At the beginning I got mixed up on my way out of Rockville, and ended up at a tourist place known as Billie Creek. It has one of Parke County’s many covered bridges. But since I was here, I stopped [...]

Last week Monday, after visiting the likely site of Isaac McCoy’s mission in Raccoon Township, Parke County, Indiana, I headed west to Rosedale and then north back to Rockville along the Catlin Road. That last stretch was an especially pleasant ride. There had been a wind out of the southwest all day, and now it [...]

This is a view along the last leg of the path from the paved road to the Maria Creek Baptist Church cemetery. (The road is one between Oaktown and Freelandville, Indiana.) The gravesite of Charles Polke is near the trees, left of center in the photo, where it would be hard to see at any [...]

Tuesday’s ride to the Maria Creek cemetery started from Rosedale. From the county histories in the library, I learned that some of the inspiration to settle in Parke County had come from soldiers who had been part of the force that went with William Henry Harrison to break up the Tecumseh/Tenskwatawa confederacy at Prophetstown. While [...]

This is a view on the way back from the walk to the Maria (aka Mariah) Creek Baptist cemetery yesterday. I had expected country that was more full of woods and ravines. Maybe if I had known it would be like this, I would have pushed harder to be able to ride here.

We spent the morning in the Rockville library. I wanted to narrow down the site of Isaac McCoy’s mission near the Ten O’Clock Treaty Line in Raccoon Township. McCoy had said he purchased land in Section 33. But the GLO land patent records that the BLM has online do not show McCoy as one of [...]

This is the last photo I took on my ride tonight. This was south of Bloomingdale in Parke County, Indiana. We’re not sure if the place we’re staying at (in Rockville) is a bed and breakfast or a motel — maybe a combination of the two. We checked in, had a fast food dinner, and [...]