Memorial Day in Leetonia...things to do.

There are two interesting things to do related to Memorial Day in and near Leetonia. First is to go up to Leetonia Cemetery and visit the soldiers grave sites.  This site is just about 600 yards down Francis Leetonia Rd to the left as you come up to Leetonia from the South. The graveyard is on a steep hill. There is also a row of babies buried up there from a whopping cough epidemic in the late 1870's. As you go up the hill you will notice an old foundation. That was the site of the first school house/church/meeting room in Leetonia.

The next thing involves a bit of driving out to Captain Lawrence Ritter's crash site. In 1946 this pilot crashed his WW2 P47 into the side of the mountain and was not found until 7 months later by bear hunters. I have instructions at the link to get there. If you are not familar with the roads but know where my place is. You head to the right out of my driveway and make the first left towards Cushman view then down the mountain and the first right is Francis Leetonia Rd. follow site directions and pictures from there. This involves about 3.5 miles of hiking to get to the wreckage site. Please do not take any of the wreckage out of respect.

Enjoy the weekend, but take a little time to remember all those who came, fought and died before us. Mountain girl, Paula, logging out.

Maple time only in PA

Maple Syrup time in the cemetery

Just when you think you seen it all. I found these maple trees scattered in the cemetery all being tapped. I wonder if the syrup is a bit sweeter there? It might depend on who is buried near the tree. Maple syrup time is in full swing and so is melting time. It rained this morning and we are now officially half mud and half snow/slush. Don't even think about traveling any unplowed road in the State Forest. Everything on the south side of the mountains has melted and everything on North side is still more than a foot deep.
The warm weather has brought the Turkeys out. This has made the little chihuahua quite happy as he missed being able to roll in fresh turkey poop. Shortly, after his bath his turned himself green rolling. Lee was not happy to repeat his bath.
We all have enjoyed temperatures as high as 50 degrees this week. Attitudes improve greatly with the warming of the weather and the longer light times. My wood pile is disappearing much slower and the cart of wood last 2 days instead of a half day. I got to spend a short time sitting on the porch in the sun this week the first time since Fall. I will let you all know when the roads are plowed. If you attempt to drive up before then good luck...you will need it. Mountain girl, Paula, logging out

The Leetonia Cemetery

The first picture shows a big improvement done to the Leetonia Cemetery last year. Its own sign and a few steps going up to the graves.
All of the graves are on the side of a very steep hill just up Francias Leetonia Rd about 150 yds from its intersection with Leetonia Rd. At one time there was a school house on the property and you can still see the foundation for it. I believe they held church services in the building as well. Later on the school was moved to the site were the Bonitz camp now sits.
There is a very surprising thing in this graveyard. A large part of it is filled with young children and babies under the age of two. Many of the stones record to the day the amount of time the children lived. Most of the deaths occured near the year 1878. I often wondered what killed them and by chance was reading an old Morris Newspaper account during the same period. It had said there was a large Whooping Cough Epidemic that had killed many children in the town of Leetonia.

The second picture shows part of the row of tiny head and footstones. It seems they keep most of the youngsters in this row heading up the mountain. It makes you realize how lucky we are today to live in a society were infant deaths are much rarer.

The last headstone is a Campbell, a World War I veteran, and from what I could tell one of the last people to be buried in the Cemetery in 1919. The Campbell family surrounds this headstone and there are quite of few of them that lived and died in Leetonia. I know one of the young Campbell boys was killed by the train in town, but I have yet to find his headstone. I believe he was about 10 when it happened.

There is something about the Cemetery that gives you a feel for how hard people who lived here had things and what a hardy group they had to have been to survive here. Mountain girl, Paula, Logging out.