May 2021 Road Trip to Kansas Part Four of Five Series

 Part 4 is Mt. Vernon - the Farm

Ash Creek valley and the road past the Hunter farm

Part 4 stays in Rooks County. It's not a very far drive from Nicodemus (Part 3) to Mt. Vernon Cemetery. As we drove up Highway 24 east from Nicodemus, we noticed how full Webster Lake was - it was really full of water after the May rain!

Mt. Vernon is where my great-grandparents, grandparents, uncles, aunt, other related family members, and my Dad were buried. 

Me standing next to Dad's grave marker

When we walked over to Dad's gravesite, we left a note, wept a few tears, told him I was back to visit. I noticed that the rock that David left for his grandpa 9-months earlier was still there.

Grandparents

Cemetery road from front gate

Great-grandfather buried on other side

The old family rumor was that my great-grandfather said he wanted to be buried by the family of his first wife and my great-grandmother, his second wife, didn't object. He is buried next to his first wife. My great-grandmother outlived her husband by 24 years -- there was some age difference between the two.

This marked my second visit back to Mt. Vernon after Dad's graveside service. When you are out there, you can hear the wind whistling through the fence wire and the blades of grass yielding to it. Losing a parent and coming back to visit is not easy. I was wondering about Dad -- he was the caretaker for this cemetery for many, many years. What did he think about when trimming around his parents and his brothers gravesites. One will never know now.  

Leaving from the cemetery, we took the very short drive to what was the Hunter farm. Fewer than four miles. My mom had told me about the Hunter home being leveled but nothing hit like seeing it a few years ago. My children saw the vacant site. The one person who had not was the driver - my wife. She knew it but nothing prepares one for the vast emptiness that was a home. It hit her hard driving up to the old driveway entrance.

Used to be a two-story house here with thick limestone walls.

So many generations of family grew up here -- it is like a part of the root is gone within your soul. My great-grandfather built buildings around the area from limestone. The house was originally a limestone house that was added onto many times.

Leaving the old farm site, we headed towards Stockton. Part five will pick up from there back to Tennessee.