I can trace the origins of this RV trip to 20 years ago when my dad, diving deeper into to his new genealogy hobby, obtained a copy of the will of our earliest known ancestor, Anthony Arnold, written in 1689. He asked if I could clean it up to make it suitable for framing.
Unfortunately, it was a scan of a photocopy, so the quality was ghastly:
My best Photoshopping efforts produced unremarkable results, so I lost interest and shelved the project. Not finishing this for my dad before he died is one of my life’s few regrets.
Fast-forward to this past July: my uncle Walter — also deep into genealogy — asked if I could clean up a similar poor-quality photocopied will. Could we, we wondered over email, get access to these actual documents?!?
His answer was an enthusiastic “yes,” so this past week we went on an epic RV road trip to do some genealogy research. Or as my Aunt Sue calls it, “dead people stuff.”
We hadn’t made it out of the parking lot before encountering our first challenge:
The RV rental place assured us it was just a faulty sensor, so we hit the road. We drove all day into the evening (a costly wrong turn delayed us even further), but we finally arrived — hungry and tired — in Hagerstown, MD on Monday night. I’ve never been so happy to see a Walmart:
We got back on the road at 5:30am to make an 8:30 appointment in Annapolis, MD at the Maryland State Archives:
I don’t have much to compare it to, but the Maryland State Archives seems to run a pretty tight ship. All the documents Walter had requested in advance of our trip had been pulled and were waiting for us by our assigned desks. Time to dive in:
I was told before our trip that I wouldn’t be allowed to bring my tripod or use a flash, so I had serious concerns about capturing high quality document photos. The on-site lighting kit and camera mount erased all of those concerns:
See that document above?…that’s the will of Anthony Arnold, the very one I had previously only seen as a terrible photocopy.
…written in the late 1600’s.
…over 80 years before the Revolutionary War.
…and I held it in my bare hands.
…and captured it as a 24 megapixel RAW photo with my Sony mirrorless camera under perfect lighting:
That morning I photographed a dozen or so other documents for Walter’s growing genealogy dossier. This one in particular I found interesting, as it lists William Arnold — grandson of the Anthony Arnold above — as a drummer in the Revolutionary War:
Honestly, the Maryland State Archives was such a treasure trove of well-organized historical riches, we could have gone home right then and still called the trip an unmitigated success.
Before leaving the Annapolis area, we drove a few miles north to Arnold, MD. It’s just a dot on the map, and we have no idea if this town’s namesake is part of our Arnold lineage, but it was cool to see “Arnold” on a handful of local establishments.
With the hustling of making our Maryland State Archives appointment behind us, the remainder of the week would be a slower pace of visiting select cemeteries in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.
First on our list was St. John’s Cemetery in Westminster, MD:
We were looking for William Arnold (the Revolutionary War drummer previously noted) but only found his wife, Henrietta.
In this post you’ll see more of Walter taking photos of Revolutionary War-era headstones. He’s using an app that overlays the date, time, and GPS coordinates that he’ll post to a couple public databases that track gravesite locations from that era.
Tuesday had been a full day at this point, so we headed to our camping spot in Woodbine, MD. This is one of the many private residences across the country posted on boondockerswelcome.com that generously provide free overnight parking for RV travelers:
Training session #1: Walter has taken quite an interest in the RV lifestyle, so Wednesday morning was the start of his formal training. I started him off easy with windshield duty; there would be more challenging lessons to come.
By early Wednesday afternoon we had traveled through much of Pennsylvania before stopping at Peter’s Creek Baptist Church Cemetery:
Walter replaced a weathered flag at the grave of Revolutionary War private Henry Huls. Henry is four or five generations up the family tree on our Arnold side.
Google’s suggested route to our next cemetery was incompatible with our 12′ tall RV:
…and the only other route was incompatible with our 29′ long RV. Note the gouges in the asphalt from other large vehicles scraping bottom on that steep grade — I wasn’t about to add more.
We moved on to our final cemetery for the day: Eldersville Methodist Church Cemetery in Burgettstown, PA. They got the award for the slope-iest graveyard:
There are a handful of Arnold relatives buried here, but also about 35 Revolutionary War vets that Walter documented:
After two nights of boondocking, we treated ourselves to water, sewer, and electrical hookups at Barkcamp State Park, just a few miles inside the Ohio border:
This was the scene inside the RV most nights as we planned our route for the following day:
Training session #2: Walter watched carefully as I hooked everything up the night before, so he volunteered to unhook and get us ready to roll Thursday morning. I say the man is a natural!
Our first stop on Thursday was at Somerset Cemetery in Somerset, OH. (My dad and Walter attended the nearby elementary school as kids.)
We visited the graves of Oscar and Bertha Arnold, my dad’s and Walter’s grandparents:
That afternoon we stopped at Elmwood Cemetery in Lancaster, OH to visit the grave of George Arnold. Originally from Pennsylvania, George and his wife Rachel were the first Arnolds to come to Ohio, and did so on horseback while Rachel was very pregnant. It’s important to note that George resides here without the company of his dear wife in this Catholic cemetery.
Rachel — not a Catholic — had to make other arrangements. We visited her grave, and those of her and George’s children, in a small cemetery on private property about 10 miles away (at least she got the kids):
Our next cemetery visit was going to be a challenge because we weren’t exactly sure how to get there — it was abandoned, with no roads leading to it, and we only had vague instructions from a couple locals on how to find it. Anticipating a muddy hike, we stopped at the local Walmart to gear up:
Per our cryptic instructions, we parked the RV in a small gravel parking lot and began our hike into farm country:
We came across this guy at one point. I don’t know my snakes enough to know if he was a threat, but we gave him plenty of space as we passed by:
Walking through overgrown fields for an hour made me appreciate George and Rachel’s arduous horseback trip — and life in that time in general — even more.
We came close to giving up because the terrain was getting quite difficult, and we still had no idea if we were even looking in the right area. I scampered ahead up a particularly steep ravine and was delighted to finally see headstones in a clearing:
I first thought there was just those few visible headstones, but upon surveying the surrounding area I noticed several more shrouded in the tall grass:
Walter and I spent the next hour or so stomping down the tall weeds so he could capture proper photos of each legible headstone. Interestingly, the Revolutionary War vet headstones all had new-ish flags — someone else apparently knows about this cemetery and had made a recent visit to honor these guys.
According to oral family history, Arnold ancestor and Revolutionary War vet Samuel Work is buried in this cemetery somewhere. We just don’t know where — he’s one of the many here in unmarked graves. Walter came equipped with an American flag and a bronze veteran grave marker for Samuel, which we placed near his fellow veterans.
From start to finish, this stop took about 3 hours and covered 2.5 miles through grassy fields, a stretch of woods, and one treacherous ravine. Google maps makes our route look flat. It was not. Not at all.
Our final visit for the day — and this trip — was in New Reading, OH. That brick house was once the home of W. W. Arnold, son of George and Rachel noted earlier. It’s now someone’s swanky vacation home:
At the cemetery beside the brick house, Walter documented a few more Revolutionary War vets:
That night’s stay in Pickerington Ohio was a first for me: boondocking in a Cracker Barrel parking lot. It was great. They have extra big parking spots specifically for RVs, and Walter kindly treated me to a delicious carry out Cracker Barrel dinner.
Final exam: On our way back to Indy on Friday morning we stopped at a truck stop to empty the waste tanks one last time. It was Walter’s time to shine. I’m pleased to report he passed with flying colors and is now officially “RV certified.”
The not-fun part of RVing, moving out:
We got the RV returned right on time and in the same condition as when we picked it up five days prior — that alone constitutes a successful RV trip. (Also, that’s my mom’s thumb in the upper right of this photo. Love you, mom! 😂)
What a week! I learned a ton about my Arnold ancestors, I held and photographed rare historical artifacts, I helped find an abandoned cemetery like a little Indiana Jones, and I got to spend some serious quality time with my amazing uncle.
It was also a nice bookend to a story that started 20 years ago with that crappy photocopy. Walter and I made some notable contributions to Arnold genealogy during this trip, and I think my dad would be proud of us both.