When I last left you, I was meeting Sandy Goodspeed and the New Berlin historian, Barb Avery. Tuesday morning arrived. We were to meet a volunteer at the library in Norwich for a day of exploring. We arrived there around 10 AM, with a few early morning flurries but mostly a bright sunshine glistening off the snow. The day was very clear. Some of you may know, Elaine Decker, while others may not. My trip had been planned for two distinct goals - one to visit my relatives there that I'd not seen since the fall of 1994 and secondly to meet as many of the folks I had corresponded with over the last few years regarding the genealogical and historical aspects of central New York state. For the second part I really didn't plan to do that much genealogical research for my own roots but rather seek out new sources of material to add to the web sites. In recent months someone had passed along information concerning one of my ancestors being buried at DeRuyter and that they had been members of the Seventh Day Baptist Church there. So that is the direction we first headed. Before we left Norwich though, Elaine, who had brought along her camera made some photos of the Chenango County Courthouse for me from various angles. We were traveling in 2 vehicles, my cousin and myself in my car and Elaine and her dog in her vehicle. I am so glad my cousin was with me for even with a map we traveled some mighty interesting roads and he was able to point out various things to me along the way, that had he not been along would of course have been completely lost on me. Taking some back streets out of west Norwich, we went up the hill on NY 23 towards South Plymouth. One thing that has always intrigued me about this part of the country is all the towns with basically the same name changed only by adding a direction to the front of the name. There is the root town name with north, east, south or west added to the front. It seems like the folks naming towns couldn't think of anything better to call their little hamlets. I honestly don't remember passing through South Plymouth but somewhere along that route we passed over a new concrete bridge that was replacing what had, according to my cousin, been a very nasty section of road with many accidents. At Stuart Corners we veered to the right on county 16 headed towards Beaver Meadow. This road is known as the East River Road. Now Beaver Meadow today is not the Beaver Meadow of yesteryear. My earliest recollection of visiting Beaver Meadow was in the summer of 1974 - when I remember going down this road from west to east across this big extremely green meadow with this little hamlet about half way across. It was one of those places one wants to visit just to say one has been there. I suppose it was somewhat like a rite of passage. This community along with several others in this part of New York had become in my mind the stuff of legend as my Grandpa told stories of the past and of friends and family that lived, worked or died there. The road on the larger state maps show the road from Plymouth, which we passed through on the way to Beaver Meadow as running straight northwest right to DeRuyter. The reality of it is though that the road dead ends into NY 26, with no indication of which way one is to go to get to DeRuyter. The road had risen here from the valley to the side of a hill as we came up to meet NY 26. My cousin thought we should turn right but I thought left as I figured if we turned right we'd end up in Otselic and even though we could of course get to DeRuyter from there, I'd much rather go the more or less direct route. So after talking it out for a minute or so, we turned left. About 1/2 mile south going towards Otselic Center we came to the next leg of County 16 heading towards DeRuyter. We traveled on this road for several miles and as we crossed into Madison County and the town of Georgetown the road changed to county road 58 or the Crumb Hill road. As we traveled out of northwest Chenango County, the road was going up and down several hills. As we came down towards DeRuyter we seemed to be going down this long valley slowly dropping mile by mile as we went down the valley to the town. Arriving in DeRuyter, and coming in from a different way than I had been before, I had no bearings or sense of where I was. Of course DeRuyter and pretty much everything else looks so much different in the winter than in the summer as well. We proceeded along until I spied the post office. I figured if anyone knew where the Seventh Day Baptist church cemetery was the postmaster or someone working there would know. I went into the post office and waited my turn. When I got to the counter I asked the lady there, who turned out to be the postmistress about the church and cemetery. The first thing she said was, 'You're not from around here are you?' :) I had to confess I was not. But then she too said she'd only been there a few months having moved there from northeastern Pennsylvania. Just at that moment a lady walked up to do some post office business and the postmistress said, "well here is who you need to ask - she works with the historical society or knows who to contact." I briefly explained to the customer what I was seeking. She laughed and said, "you can follow me home. I live next door to the church you are looking for." So we followed her home. The old church is there next to her house but looks the worse for wear. She said that a number of years ago the stained glass windows were sent to a church in Kentucky. Some of the folk in DeRuyter lamented that because the windows had had the names of some of the founders included in the stained glass windows. We looked across a patch of snow and saw the cemetery about 75 yards away. The snow here was about 18 inches deep. Being from the part of the world that rarely wears boots - at least the snow kind - I decided to just go for it, even though I had snow boots in the trunk and we had a snow shovel along. Luckily the snow had a crust and we barely sank in the snow. Since the cemetery is quite small - well at least what we could see - and since there are only about 5 to 6 rows of graves we each took a couple of rows and started looking for my ancestor's graves - WILCOX - by name. In just a short while - maybe 5 minutes, I found the tombstone over in the corner near a large tree. My cousin used the snow shovel to get some of the snow away from the stones - one modest tall marker and a couple of smaller ones on the side - then Elaine pulled out her camera and made pictures all around of the stones. That done, we started back to the vehicles. About this time Elaine's dog discovered someone cooking outdoors and went to investigate. Elaine soon recovered him and we talked about what to do for dinner. Part 4b to follow. Tim Stowell Moderator Chenango County mailing list Coordinator Chenango County, NYGenWeb pages http://www.rootsweb.com/~nychenan