Christmas & New Years Eve 2009

Catching Everybody Up 12/20-1/28/2009

Well hi to all our family and friends and I am going to try and catch you up on what has been going on the last 5 weeks or so. We spent Xmas Eve with our friends(Liz, Bob, Gina, Ed, Charlie, Mary Lee, John & Nancy) here at the house and I fixed a roast beast for everyone and it turned out great. Mom did potato salad and everybody brought something to pass around. Friday we all went to Jon and Nancy's for Xmas dinner and then on Saturday which was Boxing Day (will explain later)we all went to Liz and Bob's for dinner.

If you are wondering what Boxing Day is, you need to understand a little about Boxing Day history. Coinciding with the Feast of St. Stephen, Boxing Day is a day when people present gifts, bonuses, donations or items to others, often those less fortunate. For centuries, a Christmas box was an earthenware box used to collect donations, either as tips at a business or as donations for the poor. The Romans introduced these clay boxes as a secure way to contain coins, as they were completely contained with just a slit at the top. The only way to get access to the contents was to smash the box. People would drop coins into the Christmas boxes all year, then the day after Christmas, the box would be broken open, thus the name ?Boxing Day.? The contents would be distributed among employees or given to charitable causes. Boxing Day history is challenged by some, who have alternate explanations of the holiday. These other claims to the origin of Boxing Day, dating back to feudal times. Legends say that on the day after Christmas, the lords of the land would gather useful items and gifts together to distribute among the serfs to use the following year. As each family received a box of goods, such as grain, tools and clothing, the tradition of Boxing Day emerged. Yet another traditional origin tells that the day after Christmas was the day that servants received the day off, and wealthy employers packaged up some of the leftover food from the previous day?s feast in boxes for servants to take home. Today, Boxing Day is a public holiday and a popular shopping day, as stores offer the stock not picked up for Christmas at deep discounts. Boxing Day is celebrated in Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, as well as many British commonwealths. IN these countries, the Christmas season consists of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. If Christmas falls on a Saturday or a Sunday, Boxing Day is celebrated on the following Monday. OK now you know what Boxing Day is and you know why we celebrated it with our Canadian friends.

News Years Eve we spent with everybody at Ed's. Everybody brought an appetizer to pass and let me tell you we had enough food to feed an army and it was all delicious. We brought chicken wing dip and stuffed mushrooms. Janet and Doug drove down from NC to visit us and we brought them along and they had a great time meeting everybody and had as much fun as everybody else. I was up until after midnight too and with no nap.

After the new year celebration there hasn't been much going on. We have been doing some caching with Liz and Bob. We have been to Oak Island to have lunch with Jen, Jillian, Jenna (Jen's new baby....see pictures) and Bev. We are slowly getting the RV ready for our March 1st departure for GA, then to FL, across FL to New Orleans and then out west across Texas. We took a quick trip to TN to see Kim & Sean seeing as he was going to be home for a few days. We also ran into snow in the mountains on our way home.....didn't like that at all but it was nice to see them both and we had a good time. I went caching one day with Ed, seeing as he finally has quit working so much, in Tabor City, NC and then drove to Mullins, SC to find a place to put a puzzle cache and then we drove around finding the historical spots that we will use for the coords. Mom has been volunteering in the nursery at the hospital..........of course and loving it. Judy will be here next wednesday for a visit for about 2 weeks so Mom is looking forward to that.

I know that we haven't done as much caching as we would have liked to here this winter but if we cached 3-4 times a week we would be out of caches in 3 weeks so we have been spacing them out. Some of the better caches we have done since we last posted have been: a cache on the old Air Force base that was based on the game of Battleship where we had to find the location of 3 ships on a grid by going to different coords on the base and finding out if certain information on the grid was true or false. Once we found the 3 ships we had to arrange them by clues to figure out the final stage coords. It took us about 2 days to do it all. Battery White was another place we visited for a multi cache near Georgetown.


Battery White is a large earthwork battery, built circa 1862 as a Confederate fortification and located on a bluff overlooking Winyah Bay near Georgetown, South Carolina. It was originally part of a plantation which was at one-time owned by Revolutionary War Colonel Peter Horry, and is now included in a condominium complex.
During the Civil War, the Federal plan of attack (from 1861) included blockading and eventually capturing major ports of the Confederacy. Even prior to this, however, Winyah Bay had been recognized as important to the defense of the state. On December 30, 1860, Charles Alston, aide-de-camp to Governor Francis W. Pickens, encouraged the lowcountry planters to erect batteries:
The Governor of South Carolina asks your aid in the erection of Batteries to protect and defend the entrance fo Winyah Bay and Santee River Millions of Property and what is far more precious than Wealth Life and Honor will be at stake if we suffer marauding bands to enter our ports…. (George C. Rogers, Jr., The History of Georgetown County, South Carolina (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970), p. 388, as quoted from Board of Ordnance Papers, South Carolina Archives.)
In 1862 it was reported that General Pemberton of the Confederate Army had visited Georgetown and selected Mayrant’s Bluff as the site of a battery. Battery White was apparently built sometime soon thereafter. It was well situated, being upon a bluff approximately 20 feet above the bay where the channel narrows to 1400 yards. Apparently, from the beginning, however, the battery was plagued by insufficient manpower and armaments. In February 1863, it was reported that there were but 53 men and nine guns at Battery White. In January 1864, commanding Brigadier-General J. H. Trapier stated (in one of his several requests for artillery and manpower) that “The position itself is a strong one, and with a proper artillery and a sufficient infantry support might be rendered almost, if not absolutely, Impregnable.” (The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. XXXV, part 1 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1891), p. 546.)
Assistance was not available, however, and in October 1864, eleven Confederate soldiers deserted the battery and gave information regarding it to R. P. Swann, commander of the U.S.S. Potomska. By February 1865, the battery was reported completely evacuated. This was found to be the case when on February 24, 1865, a party from the U.S.S. Mingoe visited the battery and found it to be unmanned. On February 26, Rear-Admiral Dahlgren of the Flagship Harvest Moon reported the occupation of the battery and Georgetown. He proclaimed slavery abolished and established martial law. Two days later he reported:
The battery was found to be a well-constructed and formidable work, mounting 15 guns, of which 2 are x-inch columbiads. The previous accounts of this battery had varied so much as to render our knowledge of it uncertain. Generally, it had been much underrated and supposed to be unable to resist the attack of a single vessel or a few men. But we can now understand that it was well placed, well constructed, and strongly armed, so that we should have had some trouble to reduce it if well manned. (Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Vol. 16 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1903), p. 273.)
With the occupation of Georgetown accomplished, Dahlgren reported heading for Charleston on March 1. As the Harvest Moon began its way down the harbor, however, it struck a torpedo and sank. (At low tide, the remains of this vessel can still be seen.) No further activity occurred at Battery White in the remaining months of the war. Battery White remained undisturbed for more than 100 years being part of the Belle Isle plantation. During the late 19th Century the plantation was extensively landscaped, and circa 1946 the gardens were opened to toe public (and continued to be until 1974). Although the plantation has been developed as a condominium complex, restrictions have been made for the preservation of the battery.

Dark Shadows-The Heriot House was another cache we did in Georgetown. The Heriot House is one of the most beautiful houses in Georgetown. It is now a B+B called Harbor House. There are several ghosts stories associated with this beautiful house. Built circa 1770, it has been the home of many wealthy and influential Georgetown residents. In the era of opulence and southern gentility that preceded the Civil War the already historic Heriot House was occupied by a golden haired girl and her family. One afternoon the girl was strolling along the waterfront with her ever present canine companions. Her beauty and grace caught the attention of a young man aboard one of the ships docked at her father's wharf. The young man wasted no time in making the acquaintance of the young lady. The two had an instant rapport and began to rendezvous daily. The girls father discovered that she had a beau off a Yankee ship and told the captain of the ship to keep the man away from his daughter or dock elsewhere. The captain chose to move his ship but as this was a very busy time in Georgetown there were no other tie-ups available. The captain anchored out in the harbor much to the dismay of the girl and her beau. The determined young man sent a message to the girl to signal when her parents were asleep by placing a light in the third floor window and he would know it was safe to come ashore and meet her. That very night the couple used the signal to meet in the gardens and stroll hand in hand without fear of discovery. As time drew near for the ship to leave port the couple agreed to meet whenever his ship was in the vicinity. For nearly twenty years the girl, now woman, used the signal to meet her beau. They never married even long after the issue of parental consent was irrelevant. For unknown reasons the man stopped coming. His fate was unknown. The woman became bitter and reclusive. She continued to place the light in the window but started doing so less and less. The beloved dogs of her youth had given way to a pack of faithful dogs, the woman's only companions. During the Civil War the union blockade of Georgetown Harbor deprived the town of needed supplies. The woman once again used her signal so that the blockade runners would know it was safe to enter the harbor. By doing so the woman saved many lives. When the war ended the woman became more and more reclusive. Her only companions were her much loved dogs. Her neighbors were used to the barking of the dogs especially on nights with a full moon. So they were not concerned one night when the barking and howling were louder and more persistent than normal. However, as the din continued well into the next day they became alarmed. With no answer to their knocking and calling out, the neighbors were finally able to break in. They found the woman dead on the floor guarded by a half dozen of her faithful companions.
At first the next occupants of the house were baffled when they saw a light shine from under the door of a unused third floor room. The source of the light was never discovered but the residents gradually grew used to it. What they didn't get used to was the sound of dogs' nails clicking across the hardwood floors.

Another cache in Georgetown took us to the Beth Elohim Cemetery which has quite a bit of history. In the spring of 1885 Pauline Moses and Eliza Munnerlyn, best friends, were busily and joyously planning their weddings for the fall of the same year. The young women planned to be married on the same day and at the same time but in different places. Pauline would be married in an Orthodox Jewish ceremony and Eliza would be married at the Episcopalian church. Paulina and Eliza spent many hours through out the summer on the piazza of the Moses home planning their weddings. The piazza faced the river and usually offered a cooling breeze. By early evening they were forced inside by the annoyance of biting mosquitoes. Finally the end of September was near but the heat had not abated. The young women hoped for more comfortable weather for their weddings but October arrived with no relief. The heat, humidity and mosquitoes were still as oppressive as ever. One day during the first week of October Pauline awoke feeling hot and damp. She sent her sister to Eliza's home to explain that she was not feeling well and would stay in bed resting. Perhaps she was over taxed by the excitement of the coming weddings. By evening Pauline was no better and now Eliza was also ill and feverish. By the next evening it was clear the young women were seriously ill. The family doctors were summoned but could do nothing for the deadly yellow fever the girls had contracted. The disease, also known as malaria, is carried by mosquitoes. By October 7th both women were dead. They were buried the next day - the day on which they had planned to be married. And as they had planned for the weddings, they were buried near each other. Pauline rests at the Hebrew Cemetery while Eliza rests across the street in the churchyard of Prince George Winyah Episcopal Church. In the years after the women's death there were reports of laughter emitting from both graveyards. Passers by would look for the source of the laughter but no one could ever be found. Residents in Georgetown began to believe the laughter was Eliza and Pauline still sharing the fun of planning their weddings. Both graveyards are open to the public and you are welcome to walk around. The Moses family plot as well as the Munnerlyn family plot are easy to find. You DO NOT have to enter the graveyards to find the cache.

We did some caching on the way to TN and on the way back just to break up the trip and we did see a couple of interesting sites. One was a garden at a private home (see pictures) that was maintained by the home owner that was named Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden. When Pearl Fryar moved to Bishopville in 1976, the three acres that surround his suburban ranch-style home consisted of nothing but flat, barren cornfields. In the early eighties, he began planting and pruning trees and shrubs. After two-and-a-half decades of near constant labor, he has transformed his yard into an internationally-known topiary garden that attracts 5,000 visitors a year. The other was a site near where James Jenkins a Methodist minister was born.

Yesterday we took a trip to Wilmington to do some caching and to meet Michelle Fray another cacher that has numerous GREAT caches in that area and to have lunch with her. We found 10 caches and 5 of them were hers and some were quite hard. One of the other caches we found was in an old cemetery called Delgado Cemetery on the site of an old town called Mill Hill. This is all that is left of a small town that used to be here. This is a pretty easy find that takes you through an area that is normally overlooked. Wilmington since the 1700s has most certainly become much larger than it was when it was founded. In pursuit of becoming the city we all know today it had to expand its city limits to this location. The area this cache is located was formerly known as Delgado Village on the US Federal Census reports. It had 173 houses with 750 people in which 200 families resided, and who were employed by a textile company, Delgado Mills Inc. For 67 years "Mill Hill" in Wilmington, North Carolina was the place where thousands of hard working citizens lived, worked, and died living on a meager paycheck. The mill operated as Delgado Mills from 1900 until 1933 when it changed hands and became known as Spofford Mills Inc. The new owners were J. Holmes Davis Sr, and his son J. Holmes Davis, Jr. For almost 25 years the Davis family operated the mill until it was purchased by the Löwenstein Corporation in 1957. The plant was not very successful because of a depressed market for its particular type of manufactured cloth and was closed in 1967. The main manufacturing buildings and property was put up for sale and was purchased by some developers and the property was converted to an apartment complex which still is in business today as Forest Hills. The old churchyard is all that is left of “Mill Hill”. It has seen some rough years and is in dire need of a fixing. We had lunch with her and it was so nice to see her agin as she really is a sweet girl and really has many many fantastic caches hidden in the Wilmington area.

Well I guess we have caught you up on the past 5 weeks or so so we will close now. We will keep you posted as to our plans for leaving in a month or so so until next time we love and miss everybody. Mom & Dad............Dori & Dick