Day 1:  Peachtree City, GA to Greenville, MS.  In keeping with the long-held dream of my sister, our family Jeanne-e-ologist, she, our mother and I set out on a trek through several southern states to search for the identity of our maternal great, great grandparents.  Our great grandmother Clara was orphaned in 1881 at age three and taken in by a kind family in Tennessee.

  

A prankster with an boundless sense of humor, Clara did not allow her misfortune to dampen her spirit.  She was forever pushing the envelope, willing to try most anything to tickle the funny bone of those around her.  On a lark, she dressed in men's pants in the 1904, an act unheard of for women.  Another day, she dyed the family poodle blue to amuse her children and the neighbors.  She posed for a photo while standing inside a barrel, holding a baby goat, with her children around her.  Clara was always fun to be with and a master of practical jokes.
  
For a reason we don't understand, Clara never revealed the names of her birth parents to her daughter, our grandmother.  Perhaps she didn't know their names.  Or maybe she just thought of the couple who took care of her as her parents.  Her son was given the name of Clara's foster father.   Nonetheless, with four children and ten grandchildren of her own, sister Jeanne treasures family history, and she craves those missing names to fill in the blanks on the family tree she has been growing since a high school assignment planted the seed and fostered an interest in genealogy 45 years ago.  So off we went on a stunningly beautiful autumn day to dig for our roots.
  

Rich Delta soil

Our first night was to be spent in Greenville, Mississippi, not because it was of any significance, but the location was convenient.  However, Jeanne informed us that if we spent the night there, we were obligated to learn something about the city, which we discovered is known as "The Heart and Soul of the Mississippi Delta."
  

Nathanael Greene

The current city is actually the third to bear the Greenville name.  The first Greenville, near Natchez, never made it much past its founding just after the American Revolution.  Parent to the current city, the second Greenville was named for Nathaniel Green, a hero of the American Revolution who entered the continental army at the lowest rank, militia private, and left the service at the end of the war with the title of major general and the reputation of being one of George Washington's most trusted officers.  Many places in the United States are named for this famous son of Rhode Island.
  
Founded in 1824, the second Greenville was a thriving town when the Civil War arrived, a center of culture and business for the large plantations that prospered from the rich soil of the Mississippi Delta.  When Union troops laid siege to Vicksburg downriver, federal troops landed in Greenville.  Taking offense at being fired upon by locals, the Union forces set fire to the city and burned every building as the city's inhabitants took refuge in the homes of area planters. After the war, locals determined to rebuild the town of Greenville three miles from its former location, selecting the highest point on the Mississippi River between Vicksburg and Memphis.
  
Protection from Another Enemy:  Though founders of the third Greenville had perched the city on a high point, in April 1927, the mighty Mississippi overran the city, covering it with 10 feet of water when the levee built earlier in the decade by the Corps of Engineers, collapsed. For 60 miles to the east and 90 miles south, the Delta became a churning, turbulent inland sea.

  

Downtown Greenville, six days after the levee break of 1927

Bent on preventing such incursions in the future, the Corps rebuilt the levee to hold back 75 feet of water. "Longer and taller than the Great Wall of China," according to local descriptions, the levee was severely tested in the 2011 spring floods and barely contained the river’s raging waters. Visitors to the city can view this engineering marvel on Greenville’s downtown waterfront.

  

In Greenville, the Mississippi River levee hosts a parking lot for one of the city's barge-based casinos, which state law requires to be located in, on, or above water.

Greenville Writers:  Although Monroeville, Alabama, and other communities would no doubt challenge their claim, Greenville's city web site boasts that the city has produced more writers per capita than any other location in America.  Among the well-known authors who identify the Greenville area as their home are Shelby Foote, Walker Percy, Ellen Douglas, Bern Keating, Beverly Lowry, Willie Morris, and Hodding Carter. William Faulkner was said to be a frequent visitor and occasional resident.  Other notable natives of Greenville include Jim Henson, the puppeteer who fathered the Muppets, and Mary Wilson, one of the original Supremes.
  
Bearing Witness:  Greenville's Live Oak Cemetery was the site of our final history lesson in this Delta city.  This humble graveyard is the final resting place of Holt Collier, a hunter, soldier, and Mississippi legend.  Born a slave in 1846, Collier had established a reputation as a wildlife expert and great bear hunter by the time he reached his teens.  Granted his freedom at the outbreak of the war, Collier enlisted as a sharpshooter and guide in a Texas brigade of the Confederate army.  After the war, he often served as a guide to hunters, most famously to a party that included President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902.

Roosevelt and Collier

  
Well-known as a naturalist and hunter, the President accepted an invitation from Mississippi's governor to visit the state for a little bear hunting.  According to legend, the night before the hunt, Roosevelt had expressed his desire to see a live bear the next day, and Collier had promised to fulfill this wish.  Early the next morning Collier's pack of hounds picked up the scent of bear and chased their prey into a swamp, only to suffer a mauling at the paws of the 235-pound male.  Legend has it that Collier knocked the bear unconscious to save his hounds and tied it to a tree before summoning the rest of the party with his hunting horn.
  
Seeing the tethered and injured bear, the President declined the offer to claim it as his prize and refused to shoot the animal, though he did insist that it be euthanized.
  
Journalists on the scene reported Roosevelt's refusal to kill the defenseless bear, and the incident was portrayed in a political cartoon, "Drawing the Line in Mississippi."  The cartoon was reproduced in many newspapers, often with a revised drawing in which the bear was depicted younger and younger.  All this hoopla caught the attention of a Brooklyn, New York, toy store owner, who began marketing his stuffed toy bears as "Teddy" bears in honor of Roosevelt's forbearance.  Of course, the name stuck and the plush toys continue to bear the name today.
  
Having discovered all this history, we had to agree that Jeanne was right in her insistence that we absorb a little local lore before moving on. 

ROAD NOISE
  

Spit Your Seeds Here.  Driving through Mississippi on US-82, we saw many huge fields that had been harvested, uncovering the rich loamy Delta soil.  The soil looked so lush that you could spit out a pumpkin seed today and have a pumpkin patch by next week.

  

FRIDAY, 28 OCTOBER—SATURDAY, 29 OCTOBER 2011

But driving along Broadway, the town's main drag, one discovers evidence that things were not always so calm in this quiet hamlet.  Splashed across the side of the downtown building housing Village Floral is a colorful mural depicting a night when local men, armed with clubs, scythes, and other farm implements, united to drive out intruders.

  

Kentucky Raid mural, Cassopolis, MI

Fueled by the passion of early Quaker settlers, Cass County in the early 19th century was a hotbed of abolitionism.  Many of Cass's Quakers had left the South to distance themselves from slavery and, when the opportunity arose, they eagerly provided aid and comfort to escaped slaves along two different routes of the Underground Railroad.
  

Called Sanctuary and Deliverance, the mural was completed in 2010.

In this hospitable environment, an African American community soon developed in Cass County, built by both escaped slaves and free people of color. African American settlers in Cass founded schools and churches, were elected to township offices and served in many non-agrarian professions.  Then one fateful night in August of 1847, an armed band of 13 Kentuckians rode into Cass County bent on capturing former slaves and returning them to Kentucky.  The southerners broke into smaller parties and invaded various settlements, abducting escapees.

  

Cassopolis artist Ruth Andrews designed the mural.

Word of the raid spread quickly, and  a crowd of 200 Cass County residents gathered to stop the Kentuckians.  A confrontation ensued in the village of Vandalia, and only the influence of the peace-loving Quakers prevented the crisis from escalating into violence.  Outnumbered, the raiders gave themselves up and were transported to Cassopolis to stand trial, believing the law was clearly on their side in the form of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.

  

Various scenes from the raid are depicted on the mural.

With the Cass County judge out of town, the Quakers brought in an abolitionist magistrate from a neighboring county, who found for the fugitives on a paperwork technicality.  The Kentucky raiders went home empty-handed but incensed and determined to strengthen the federal law on fugitive slaves.  A more stringent Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, increasing the danger for both the freedom seeker and those who abetted their escape.  Authored by Henry Clay, this law became one of the primary vehicles propelling the nation into civil war.
  
Cass Countians today remain very proud of their historical involvement in the Underground Railroad, an effort based on mutual trust and respect among Quakers, free blacks, escaped slaves and other abolitionists.  Local societies have been formed to preserve this heritage with historical markers, driving tours, and such initiatives as the Kentucky Raid mural entitled Sanctuary and Deliverance. 

  
Rock On!  On I-80 near Chicago, we drove over the amazing Thornton Quarry, one of the largest aggregate quarries in the world.  In use since 1924, the quarry is 1.5 miles long, a half mile wide and 400 feet deep.  A bridge carries interstate highway traffic over the mammoth pit.

  

Thornton Quarry (photo by Hanson Engineering)

Life Takes a Toll.  At the Cassopolis post office today, I paid my debt to the Illinois Tollway.  After buying for an envelope, stamp and money order, my $1.00 mistake cost me $2.64, not to mention the recurring nightmares.

  
Barking Out the Wrong Tree.  Why are cedar trees such victims of mistaken identity in the Midwest?  Among letterboxers, anyway.  Unlike in Iowa and Minnesota, where cedars were referred to as pines, in Illinois and Indiana, we have found them at locations where fir trees were said to be.

Kitties Thank Cassopolis.  Another claim to fame for Cassopolis, MI:  Ed Lowe, the inventor of cat litter, grew up in Cassopolis.  Before his invention, people kept their cats outside.  After the development and marketing of his Kitty Litter product, the popularity of cats as household pets grew significantly.  Way to go, Ed!  Cat lovers everywhere thank you.  
  

DAILY STATS

• Started in: Joliet, IL
• Ended in:  Elkhart, IN
• Miles driven: 212          (Trip total:  2,110)
• States: 3 (IL, MI,IN)
• Letterboxes found:  6           (Trip total:  65) 
• Weather: Sunny, 47° to 58°
• Gas:  $3.399 (Joliet, IL)
• Tolls paid (IL and IN):  too darn many!

Historical marker in Vandalia, MI

Cass County Courthouse

Bristol, Indiana

Wrong way driver?     (No just being towed.)

Of course, as soon as we passed through, I realized I had been mistaken.  The tollbooth was for the highway, not part of an exit.  What now?  Not a good idea to back up on an interstate highway, even to pay a stinking toll.  Get off at the next exit and drive north of the tollbooth and return to pay the toll, maybe.  Then wouldn't we need to pay it twice?  Almost immediately we saw a sign that said we could pay unpaid tolls online.  Oh, goody!

  

Pay again??

Geez, this could be so much simpler if Chicago would just do what most of the rest of the country does and stay out of our pockets on the highways we've already paid for once.  As we learned later, of the 47,000 miles of interstate highways in the U.S., only 2,900 miles (about 6%) are toll roads.  And the good old Illinois Tollways (operating only in the Chicago area) is collecting for of 286 of those miles.  Yes, that's almost 10 per cent!

  

Another opportunity to pay!

To add insult to injury, there is one tollbooth after another.  You don't just pay once to use this highway.  No, sir.  Every few miles, you get to pay again... and again... and again.  So at the next toll plaza, we explained what happened, that the GPS was telling us to stay to the left, and asked the not so friendly toll operator if we could pay her the toll that we missed.

  

All these toll booths double the travel time.

Indeed not, we were told.  And the operator put us on notice that we were allowed to make only two mistakes on the tollway.  I was afraid to ask what might happen if we committed a third breach of tollway rules.  Then she generously scribbled out a pay by mail form for us and handed it over with a bit of advice for no extra charge.  "Don't listen to your GPS," she warned.

  

Do not mess with Illinois toll takers.

Is it really legit for Illinois to charge tolls for federally funded highways?  As it turns out, these roads were grandfathered into the federal interstate system in 1956.  The roads were already in existence as toll roads, and the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads could incorporate the toll roads into the interstate system more economically than building toll-free roads through the same corridor.
  
Make no mistake, the Illinois Tollway is serious about collecting tolls and will not tolerate scofflaws who listen to their Garmins.  In fact, later in the evening when we returned to our car in the local Target parking lot, we found a local police car waiting nearby and wondered if he had come to exact payment of our unpaid toll.

  

You looking for me, sir?

Unfortunately, that was not his mission.  We still have to pay 44 cents to mail payment for a $1.00 toll. 
   

  
DAILY STATS

• Started in: Madison, WI
• Ended in:  Joliet, IL
• Miles driven: 203  
• States: 2 (WI, IL)
• Letterboxes found: 8 + 1 hh
• Weather: Sunny, 44° to 66°
• Radio stations in the area carrying Atlanta game:  0
• I-90 toll plazas:  15 (in 70 miles)
• Errors we made on the next tollway:  1 (Whew!)

SATURDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2011