Day 7

Today was the start of our Treasure Hunt. First, we decided to have lunch and Linwood asked a girl on the street where was a good place for us to eat. She was right, the place was so good. Linwood said our waitress reminded him of Becca. She was easy to talk to and she was a toucher. Of course, he left her a good tip.

I had called the Courthouse of Carlisle several weeks ago when I found out that it is the county seat of Lemoyne where his dad was born. The person I spoke to was very nice and said for us to come in when we got up here and she would help us. Here is a picture of Linwood entering the Courthouse.

At the Courthouse we did found the death record of James O. Erb on Feb 14, 1923. James is Linwood's granddaddy (I will call him gd from now on) . We did not find a will but there was an paper that showed the amount of the inventory. More about this paper later. We also found the marriage license of gd's son also named James O. Erb to Mildred Miller in 1929. From the Courthouse we went to the Historical Society and they were also very helpful. There we were finally able to find that gd was buried in Camp Hill, PA. We started out for Camp Hill and got lost for the first time on this trip. Linwood had to take a picture of me looking for help.

We got to Camp Hill and did not know where to find the cemetery. We stopped at a florist and I went in. It was huge and Ashley I thought of you immediately. Everything was so beautiful. A lady said she knew where an old cemetery was and gave me great directions. We drove into the one small road and just looked at each other. We did not know where to start so we decided to go to the other end of the road. There actually four sections to the cemetery. We each took two rows at a time and tried not to overlap each other. There were about 1500 gravestones and about two-thirds through Linwood decided I needed to go to the car. The paper we got from the Courthouse had the name of the undertaker and how much he was paid. While we were at the Historical Society I had looked up the phone number and there was a Funeral Home in Lemoyne with the same name. I placed the call and was able to speak to great grandson of the undertaker. He was so nice and said their records had burned in the 1940's. I was hoping he would have a grid of where gd was buried. I started looking again in section four while Linwood finished section three. Linwwod came over to help in section 4.

The rest is in Linwood's words.

We kept on looking. We had not come over 900 miles to stop now. We got to the last five rows in the cemetery. Margaret said she would take one side of the tree and for me to take the other side. The first grave was MY Grandfather. I shed tears because I had had so much hope to find his grave site and I had never thought it would ever happen. We thought it might be that he would have been buried in an old church graveyard. I have no idea where my grandmother is buried because she remarried after my gd's death and moved from Lemoyne. I will continue to try and find information on her. I never thought this would happen. This would not have been possible without my wife, Margaret. She said we came too far to stop looking now, so we didn't. We are going to try to get some flowers to put on his grave tomorrow. I have no idea how long it has been since there have been flowers there

Tomorrow, we are on to Lemoyne, PA where my dad was born and then to Lewisburg where the orphanage is where he and his brother lived after his dad died. The rest of the trip will be for Margaret.

We found our first treasure today. I am so happy for my husband.