Windy & Cool Day in the Appalachians & A few Caches 5/19/2008

We got up this morning to a nice bright sunny day although it was a bit chilly so we loaded some caches into the GPS and off we drove. Last night was another night where we heard cannon and artillery fire from Fort Indiantown Gap Military Reservation as they must have been having night maneuvers and the booms could be heard very clearly inside the RV. As the morning progressed it got cloudy and very very windy, which of course made it seem a lot cooler than it was, and it started to sprinkle on and off. Our first cache was a Earthcache where we visited Swatara State Park and drove into a fossil bed where you could look for fossils and keep anything you could find. We got out and soon we had located 2 different fossils to complete the cache. We took pictures and marked the coords also for the cache. A little history on Swatara State Park in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania allows visitors a glimpse back in time. The park covers 3330 acres in Lebanon and Schuykill counties in south-central Pennsylvania. The most striking feature of the park is the Swatara Creek Water Gap - where the creek cuts through the hard stone of Blue Mountain. At its narrowest, the gap is only 800 feet across and it is about a mile across at its widest. Fossil Pits in Swatara State Park contain both Tuscarora Quartzite, which is 425 million years old from the Silurian Age, and Martinsburg Formation, which is 500 million years or Ordovician, which produced 235 feet of fossiliferous beds exposed in an open pit. The Suedberg fossil pit contains fossils some 375 million years old. The fossils here are more abundant than at the water gap site. Various species of brachiopods, corals and sea lilies can be found here. It really was fun doing the cache and actually finding some fossils.
Our next few caches were simple traditional caches one found on a guardrail in Ravine, PA, 2 in Pine Grove, PA located on different pieces of old war artillery, our next cache was on a guardrail at a old covered bridge outside Pine Grove for which I was unable to find out anything about it, and our next cache was near a exit off Rt 81 in the woods.
We had to drive through Fort Indiantown Gap to find our next cache which is an active military reservation so you could not leave any of the roads for any reason and if they caught you supposedly they would arrest you. The cache was a virtual called The Blue Eyed Six for which we had to drive to a location and get some information off a sign and send it by email to the cache owner. There is quite a history on the Blue Eyed Six who were a group of six men, all of them were coincidentally blue-eyed, who were arrested and indicted on first degree murder charges in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, in 1879. The Six were Charles Drews, Frank Stichler, Henry F. Wise, Josiah Hummel, Israel Brandt and George Zechman. This group of friends and unsavory business associates conspired to murder their neighbor, Joseph Raber, for an insurance pay-off. Raber, age 65, lived in poverty with his housekeeper in a charcoal burner's hut in the Blue Mountain area of northern Lebanon County. Raber had no steady employment and depended mainly on the charity of his equally impoverished neighbors. In early July 1878, four of the conspirators met at Brandt's hotel at St. Joseph Spring and agreed to insure Raber for a total of $8,000. The men told the insurance agent that they had agreed to take care of Raber for the rest of his life and wanted the policy to cover his eventual burial expenses. Several assessment-type life insurance policies were sold on Joseph Raber, with his cooperation, with the men named as the beneficiaries. Later that year they enlisted two other men to drown Raber in Indiantown Creek. Without any evidence to the contrary, the coroner ruled the death accidental. Although the local citizenry suspected foul play, it wasn't until two months later, when Drews's son-in-law reported to the constable that he was an eye-witness to the murder, that the six men were arrested and held over for trial.Due, perhaps, to the fanciful nickname that the conspirators were given by the newspapers, the trial gained more than its share of attention. Reporters from throughout the east coast descended on Lebanon, and the story was carried worldwide. The trial began on 18 April. The Commonwealth's main witness was Drews's son-in-law, but he was only one of thirty-six witnesses called by the prosecution. The defense called twenty-two witnesses. The witnesses on both sides were mainly friends, neighbors, and family members who contradicted each other at every turn. It became evident that there were many people who knew of, or suspected, the plot before and after Raber's death, but who did not come forward for fear of mortal retaliation. At 3:30 p.m. on 24 April 1879, the fate of the Blue Eyed Six was left in the hands of the twelve men of the jury. The wait was not long. Five hours later the courthouse bell rang out, announcing that they had reached their verdicts. The jury returned verdicts of guilty of first degree murder for all six of the defendants. Defense requested that the jury be polled, and so the word "Guilty" was uttered seventy-two times, once for each defendant from each juror. The local newspaper noted that it was the first time in the recorded history of common law of the United States and England that six people were convicted of murder on a single indictment. On appeal, the judge awarded Zechman a new trial, based on the lack of direct evidence presented by the Commonwealth against him personally. He was acquitted in his second trial on essentially the same evidence. The other five defendants were sentenced to death by hanging. Drews and Stichler, who had done the deed, were hanged first. After all other appeals were exhausted, Wise, Hummel, and Brandt were hanged the next year. Zechman died of natural causes within the decade. Apart from the actual murder trial, the whole proceeding turned out to be an indictment of the murky business of assessment life insurance, which led to major changes in insurance law, particularly with regard to the practice of insuring people in whom one had no legal interest. The Blue Eyed Six are commonly thought to be buried in the cemetery at Moonshine's Church (actual name of its founder Henry Moonshine, who donated the land for the church and cemetery), Grantville, PA, near the site of the murder. Although Joseph Raber, the victim, is buried there, the six conspirators were all buried separately by their families elsewhere in the county. Nevertheless, local folklore persists that they haunt the churchyard of the church on Moonshine Rd. The legend tells that someone in the church one night felt watched. He turned to see 3 sets of blue eyes staring through the blanket of darkness behind the window into the room. The stares followed him everywhere; he could not escape them. He freaked. Since then, many, many people have told the story of seeing the 3 sets of blue eyes, or The Blue-Eyed Six looking at them through the window, or in the graveyard, or anywhere else around the church late at night. Many people have gone up there at night just to see..
Our next cache coincidently was at the cemetery of the Moonshine Church and it was a multi-cache. We had to go the cemetery to find the grave site of Sabrina Drews, wife of one of the Blue Eyed Six as we needed to get some information off the stone to figure out the coords for the second part and we did see the grave of Joesph Raber. We figured out the final coords and we drove back out of Fort Indiantown Gap property to a site near the Applachain Trail where there were ruins of an old stone house where we found the cache hidden in the crumpled back wall under some of the stones used to build the house. We knew when we were looking for the grave site in the Moonshine Cemetery something felt kind of spooky and eerie as legend has it that if you wander into the woods behind the church at midnight, you'll not be able to find your way back and if you do you'll more than likely be welcomed by a pentagram on the back door. More stories of seeing ghosts and soldiers walking around in the church if you peer through the windows at night are told. If a car is speeding past, it's said that it will stall. Visitors are warned not to turn their car off because it will not restart.
We had to drive back through Pine Grove and we noticed an old movie theater and we took some pictures and found some history on it. The Hippodrome Theater was constructed in 1910 by Gregory Achenbach, father of Harvena Achenbach Richter, wife of noted author Conrad Richter, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. Vaudeville and other live productions were held on the stage in addition to movies being shown. In 1935 the theater was refurbished (probably to add sound) and the name was shortened to Hipp. It closed in the mid 1950's. In October 1962, after a complete reconstruction (removal of the orchestra pit, balcony, and many exit doors) it reopened as the Pine Theaterwith "The Music Man". The theatre operated for seven days a week for a few years until going to weekends only. The upstairs was known as the Pine Terrace which hosted class reunions, wedding receptions, and banquests. Pine Terrace closed in the late 1970's and the theater began to deteriorate. It closed in 1999. The Millers bought the theater and completed refurbished it, removing some seats for handicapped access. Opening as Pine Grove Theatre in April 2001 with "Cast Away", it began to host Pinegrove Historical Society programs, concerts, plays, and other live entertainment. Boy some of these small towns really have some great history.
Next cache was in a small park back in the woods overlooking a lovely small lake with only one private home on the lake and our last cache was at Lickdale Campgrounds near where we are staying which was a multi-cache. We found both stages quickly and then we were off back to the campgrounds. I took a shower and Mom did our cache logs. I am still attempting to put pictures on our blog without much luck so far. Well it's time to feed the dogs and then we are going to eat so we will say until tomorrow when we will be at Scott's house in Binghamton. We love you all and can't wait to see you guys.


Picture List:1-Dori freezing her tushy off with our fossils, 2&3-Two of the fossils we found in Swatara State Park, 4,5,6,7-Covered Bridge in PA, 8,9,10,11-Ruins where the final stage of the Blue Eyed Six cache was located, 12-St Joesph's Spring Circa 1937, 13,14,15,16,17,18-Revolutionary Soldiers and early settlers of Pine Grove, PA Cemetery, 19-Moonshine United Zion Church, 20-Joesph Raber the man killed by the Blue Eyed Six, 21-Suedberg Church of God, 22-Hippidrome Theater Circa 1910, 23-Old coal loading docks, 24-Old house along the road, 25-Private home on a small lake.