It’s Not Me, It’s Him, Right?

Mandatory Fun Part 1

Apparently I had not taken a week or longer vacation in over a year. Plus, my employer has decided to tweak the vacation rules, so I had some vacation time I had to use soon or I would lose. There’s really nowhere I wanted to go, but a few things converged that I could do:

• Get some genealogical research done
• See Michigan hockey on the road
• Drive around and see fall colors

So this became the trip, I would visit upstate New York. On Monday the trip began, with the goal of reaching the hotel I reserved in Utica, New York. But, before I get there, I visited some relatives along the way in Lorain County, Ohio (SW of Cleveland):

3rd Great-Grandfather James Jackson	3rd Great-Granduncle Pliny Jackson	4th Great-Grandmother Diantha Harmon Coats
5th Great-Grandfather Pliny Kellogg	5th Great-Grandmother Mary Kellogg
3rd Great-Grandfather Alanson Mason	3rd Great-Grandmother Susannah Curtice Mason	The crack cemetery security

The grave”stones” of the Kelloggs are interesting, as they are recent replacements made out of essentially siding materials.  Don’t know how long those will last, but considering some of the gravestones were unreadable, maybe it’s not a bad thing.

Of course, it just wasn’t all just seeing relatives in Ohio.  One must take in some of the representation of the educational system in the Buckeye State (see right).  I was also pretty much tailed out of one of the cemeteries for eight miles through a few towns by one of Ohio’s finest, just waiting for me to go one mile over the speed limit.  Once out of the Cleveland area, I eschewed the interstate for US-20, which was OK except for Erie.  Once darkness hit, I then joined the cement drabness and got to my hotel at a reasonable hour for some sleep.  Hotel was nothing fancy, other than it was once a motel that was converted to a hotel by putting in an enclosed hallway in front of the rooms.

Tuesday was time to hit the northern NY relatives, which included trips to Champion and Oswego, both towns roughly within half-hour of Watertown, NY. Oswego proved to be interesting to me mostly because of the bizarre plaza to the left. I then learned that until a few months ago, there was actually an additional parking level at the same elevation I was standing, but had recently been demolished due to safety concerns. I couldn’t find out if there were any plans afoot to replace it or make it more pleasing to the eye.

The trip to Oswego proved to be fruitless, as I was trying to find some relatives that I had seen in other genealogies as being in the Oswego area. That proved to be not verifiable, as no cemetery records could be found. However, I would have never known where The Price is Right gets its furniture prizes nor where Jimmie Janes ended up once NewsRadio went off the air.

Champion and the next town over Carthage proved to be a little more fruitful. I got to see a few more relatives as well as see a prime example of something you probably shouldn’t use the discount version. Part II will move onto the southern NY relatives, a trip to the Baseball and Boarded Up Storefront Hall of Fame, and some college hockey ECAC-style.

4th-Great Grandomther Martha “Patty” Kellogg Jackson	4th-Great Grandfather Daniel Jackson