All,
In 1796 George Washington was still President (1789-1797), Napoleon Bonaparte got hitched to Josephine, the last British troops withdrew from America, and Tennessee was admitted at the 16th US state. While these are fun and interesting facts, what does this have to do with my outing you may ask? Let me explain.
As Al (manumuskin) and I have been searching for stones over the last few months, we have been trying to find incised stone placed by Elnathan Davis in 1796. Between the two of us we have found a few placed by him, but have been striking out with stones that included writing on them. Actually we had found some that originally had writing on them; however, they no longer did. A few weeks back we visited a location at the end of our day where we had hoped to find one, and as usual left disappointed. Many hours of research had gone into this and we wanted to get some results. So this week Al suggested we return there and give it one more try, so I reevaluated my info coming to the conclusion we were in the right location.
At 8:20 this morning we met along the road and discussed our strategy, and then drove as close to the spot we could. We basically had returned to the same location as before. It was knee high in vegetation, and not a good area to look. Roaming around we used some of our skills to make educated guesses on where to go, and I headed one way and Al the other. It is interesting how when your name is called, that you can tell what the results will be, and when I heard Al call my name I knew it was all worth while. By now it was 8:30AM.
This says “S” for Society, and 1796.
If anyone else has visited and walked around this stone over the years, they may have thought this was all that was written on it, but Al and I knew better, so I hiked back to my car and retrieved my crowbar and headed back. Carefully digging around the stone to not damage it, we removed quite a bit of dirt and vegetation to reveal what must have been hidden for many years. Incised in the stone were what we had worked so hard to fine, the initials of Elnathan Davis. The day was young, but our day had already been etched in stone as a good one, since we had found what we had come for.
The letters "ED" for Elnathan Davis the surveyor of the property in 1796.
If you are into movies such as National Treasure, or Indiana Jones (yes Al I remembered the name), you would think that all historical treasures are protected by some sort of trap to keep you from taking them. Well, this stone had just that, a discretly hidden .......well see for yourself.
Guy
In 1796 George Washington was still President (1789-1797), Napoleon Bonaparte got hitched to Josephine, the last British troops withdrew from America, and Tennessee was admitted at the 16th US state. While these are fun and interesting facts, what does this have to do with my outing you may ask? Let me explain.
As Al (manumuskin) and I have been searching for stones over the last few months, we have been trying to find incised stone placed by Elnathan Davis in 1796. Between the two of us we have found a few placed by him, but have been striking out with stones that included writing on them. Actually we had found some that originally had writing on them; however, they no longer did. A few weeks back we visited a location at the end of our day where we had hoped to find one, and as usual left disappointed. Many hours of research had gone into this and we wanted to get some results. So this week Al suggested we return there and give it one more try, so I reevaluated my info coming to the conclusion we were in the right location.
At 8:20 this morning we met along the road and discussed our strategy, and then drove as close to the spot we could. We basically had returned to the same location as before. It was knee high in vegetation, and not a good area to look. Roaming around we used some of our skills to make educated guesses on where to go, and I headed one way and Al the other. It is interesting how when your name is called, that you can tell what the results will be, and when I heard Al call my name I knew it was all worth while. By now it was 8:30AM.
This says “S” for Society, and 1796.
If anyone else has visited and walked around this stone over the years, they may have thought this was all that was written on it, but Al and I knew better, so I hiked back to my car and retrieved my crowbar and headed back. Carefully digging around the stone to not damage it, we removed quite a bit of dirt and vegetation to reveal what must have been hidden for many years. Incised in the stone were what we had worked so hard to fine, the initials of Elnathan Davis. The day was young, but our day had already been etched in stone as a good one, since we had found what we had come for.
The letters "ED" for Elnathan Davis the surveyor of the property in 1796.
If you are into movies such as National Treasure, or Indiana Jones (yes Al I remembered the name), you would think that all historical treasures are protected by some sort of trap to keep you from taking them. Well, this stone had just that, a discretly hidden .......well see for yourself.
Guy
