The Crowe Cemetery Mystery Cache
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(small)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
On the way to the caches on this Shepody road take your time; it could be harmful to your vehicle. There are boulders and large gravel on the road. Take your time. I wouldn’t want to see anyone have to walk out.
The coordinates listed above will take you to the entrance to the Crow Cemetery.
Once there you take the path up over the hill to where the residents reside. Once you get to know them better they will tell you where they have hidden the cache.
A. – Is the last digit in the age of James Crow.
B. – Is the first digit in the age of John Patton.
C. - Is the last digit in the age of William McLaughlin.
D. – Is the age that Robert J.L. Alexander died.
E. – Is the day Mary J. died.
F. - Is the first digit in the day Robert J.L. Alexander died.
G. - Is the last digit in the year Albert Alonzo died.
H. - Is the last digit in the age of John Patton
I. – Is the age at which Robert J.L. Alexander died.
J. – Is the last digit in the year that Martha died.
N 45 - AB.CDE
W 065 - FG.HIJ
Small container contains.
1 Log book.
2 Pencil.
3 Eraser
4 Finger puppet
5 Travel Tag fastened to a New Brunswick key ring.
This is a trackable. But only on www.travelertags.com
You have to go to this site and enter the tag #, cache code and the coordinates when you pick it up and again when you drop it off.
Just a note on Martha. She was a Native of Londonderry
She would have been born in 1774. That was a long time ago.
She may have known my 3rd great-grandfather. He was born 1773 and I think he settled in Long Settlement which isn’t far from here. He came from Ireland about 1818
Who knows, maybe they came over together. I don’t know anything about his family, who knows she could be his sister, only 1 year apart in age.
The Crowe Cemetery is an old cemetery found on the north side of the Shepody Road approximately 3.3 km from the Schoales Dam Forest Ranger station. It is completely overgrown, but there is a small sign by the side of the road and a trail leading up to the cemetery, where other paths take you to the various sites where stones are erected. Some monuments are only iron markers with no information preserved on them. It is hard to establish the dates between which the cemetery was used since some of the data is now missing, however we can surmise that it was not used prior to 1818 or even possibly 1826.
In 1818, James Crow came to New Brunswick from Ireland, most probably with his father or brother. Like many others at that time, he may have been given a location ticket which allowed him to settle upon a lot of land and improve upon it before formally applying for a grant of the land in his own name at a later date. He applied for his grant of land in 1826 and/or 1827. He was granted his 50 acre grant in 1834. There is no indication as to when the grant next to it, granted to George Crow, was received. This George Crow would appear to be the father or brother of James as he appears on a petition to have the route of the road changed in 1826. There is no record of this George Crow in the 1851 census for Hammond. We do find a George Crow living a few miles north on the border of what is now Hammond and Waterford Parishes in 1861.
So the land for this cemetery would not have been set aside for such use before 1818 and maybe as late as 1828, the earliest known date for a burial there. The latest burial may have been in 1891, as that is the last date known with any certainty. After that date, few people lived in that area.
The cemetery is found, as I mentioned, by traveling by foot about 150 m up the hill from the road. Many people may wonder why a cemetery was ever put here, so far from the road and on such a steep hill. However we make this judgment based upon where the road is today. Back when the road was first laid out and the land was granted by location ticket, the road actually ran in pretty much a straight line rather than curving around the hills in this area, meaning that the roadway was actually about 300m further north than its present course at this point. The road, originally built about 1817, was changed in 1826 because some of the 1817 road, in this section in particular, was along the tops of hills, some of which were extremely steep and rocky, making passage through the area very difficult. The cemetery, then, would have been south of the old road and probably beside it on a little knoll.
Without the benefit of a survey, it is hard to say with any certainty on which property the cemetery lies, but the best guess would place it roughly in the upper right hand corner of the George Crow grant. By the 1890's, there was the beginning of an exodus away from the area since the road was no longer used by the stagecoach nor was the road used as the main road from Shepody to Saint John, a new one being opened through Harvey around 1845-1850. With the end of the stage through the area, the hope of the area becoming a thriving trading area began to wane. People began to move to Sussex, to Saint John and to other regions, some even as far away as Western Canada, where the land was good and they were looking for farmers.
There are only nine markers remaining in this cemetery, but there are undoubtedly more graves here than represented by the markers. Like many other cemeteries, stones may either be missing or never erected in the first place. Of the nine markers, three are missing the names of those buried there. This leaves us with only six markers designating people buried here.
From Ruby M. Cusack’s writings.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Va n juvgr ovepu