A Solemn Search for One Man’s Final Resting Place

It was July of 1776 when James Adams went into the farmlands of central Pennsylvania to recruit a militia for the budding American Revolution. He “summoned his men from the harvest field,” as an article would later say, and, attaining the rank of captain, led the Cumberland County Associators in combat.

He had felt the need to do his part, but like other soldiers in other wars, when it was over, he went home. He was a farmer and returned to a wide, fertile area known as “Big Valley” where he and his wife Isabella raised 13 children. In 1824, he died, his will expressing a wish to “be byried in a decent like Manner.”

In my family, we had always known about our Revolutionary War ancestor. But memories blur and burial records disappear, and the location of his gravesite was unknown. No headstone could be documented or found.

His resting place might have been lost forever if a 16-year-old Eagle Scout, a direct descendant, had not raised the question.

My son, Glenn John Adams, made it the topic of an essay he wrote as part of an application for a scholarship offered Eagle Scouts. His research took him to the state library in Augusta, Maine, where we lived. He reviewed microfilm from the Mormon church’s genealogical collection and searched through old family papers. The documents provided some answers. In the end, the essay deadline arrived, and exactly where James was buried remained unclear.

The question nagged at me. My son’s research had created a hope that I might visit the grave of my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, perhaps even take my World War II-veteran father to see it. I couldn’t accept forgetting forever a man who had answered his country’s call in its most vulnerable days. And I hate to see a job unfinished. I had to find Capt. Adams’ grave.

At the time, I didn’t know that the search would involve piecing together minute scraps of information gleaned from dozens of sources, from the Daughters of the American Revolution to a man who cared for an old churchyard on his own. It would introduce me to distant relatives I didn’t know existed. It would lead up blind alleys and also yield a lucky break or two. My search would span four years.

*

A file of family documents that had been handed down was my first step. I pored over genealogical research of years earlier.

It included Pennsylvania Archives records documenting James’ service in the Cumberland County Associators. An undated newspaper piece written by the Mifflin County (Pa.) Historical Society said James “played an important role” in the Revolution, but gave few details.

After describing how he called men from their fields, it noted: “When the militia was organized in 1777, he was made Captain of the Fourth Company of the Fifth Cumberland County Battalion. In October, 1777, he served two months in the Philadelphia area. In January, 1778, his company was at Bald Eagle fighting the Indians.”

A county history says Adams’ reserve unit reinforced the Continental Army. The soldiers were sent to fight the British and Indians.

What had prompted 40-year-old James to migrate two years before the Revolution from southeastern Pennsylvania to Kishacoquillas Valley in what was then Cumberland County isn’t known. A possible reason: Around then, settlers were offered 1,000-acre grants in the valley, which today is blanketed by well-maintained farms, many of them run by Amish families.

But where James Adams’ grave might be and who might have records were mysteries. Cumberland County had been divided over the years; I wrote to Cumberland and Mifflin counties, and neither had a record.

A clue surfaced when I found a document showing that James was taxed in Armagh Township in Mifflin County. I called the township office and was referred to the head of the board of cemeteries. Another dead end: No record of a grave for James Adams.

The Internet helped me sift through hundreds of names in cemetery databases and showed links to historical societies that might provide fragments of information. In fact, one local historical society’s Web link put me into contact with a distant cousin who is descended from one of James’ 13 children. Neither she nor another relative I found on the Web had information on James’ grave, though.

Nonetheless, the frustrations made the challenge more enticing, and each tiny clue invigorated my spirit.

I found a list of Mifflin County cemeteries -- and the woman who compiled the list, Vicki Shimp. Volumes listing names have a section for Revolutionary War veterans, she said -- “but there is no reference to a James Adams.” Nor did his name appear in a volume of obituaries of the county covering the period.

A James Adams of Union Township did turn up in a listing of wills, and that matched the township on a copy of his will. But again, it provided no hint of where his grave was.

I contacted the Daughters of the American Revolution in Washington, which referred me to their local representative. But no one in the DAR could point to a record documenting where James Adams was buried.

Many people suggested that James’ gravestone might well be lost, or its lettering obliterated over nearly two centuries.

I wondered: Could his final resting place be in a farm field? But a check of transactions involving farms where graves were located showed that was unlikely.

There seemed to be nothing more to ask in letters, phone calls or e-mails.

*

My last resort would be a trip from Maine to Pennsylvania, where I would visit town halls, knock on doors and physically search through graveyards. I asked my father, Glenn Sr., if he would like to go, and he eagerly agreed.

We left from his home in Woodbury, N.J., near Philadelphia early one April morning in 2001. The warm spring air was melting the last snow on the hills as we made our way west and up the Susquehanna River toward Mifflin County. I could not help thinking that this riverside route is probably close to the one that James followed when he migrated to Kishacoquillas Valley.

At the Mifflin County courthouse building in Lewistown, a Veterans Affairs official searched through loose-leaf binders and cards listing cemetery sites for veterans, but found no listing for a James Adams.

Our next stop was a Revolutionary-era cemetery, behind the small, white clapboard Fellowship Baptist Church sitting atop a knoll outside of town. My dad and I checked all of the stones. No luck.

A man tending the graveyard mentioned another cemetery of the same era in the Belleville area. At the time, I didn’t realize the significance of that clue: Belleville.

At the next stop, the Armagh Township office, we were given directions to two old cemeteries. The Milroy Presbyterian Churchyard was full of aging markers -- but not the one we sought. On a quiet hilltop past some farms, we found the Salem United Methodist Cemetery. But Dad pointed out that the earliest grave there was 1834, a decade too late for our ancestor.

The afternoon was getting on and we seemed to be running out of options.

We returned to the Armagh office and I asked what communities comprise Kishacoquillas Valley. Armagh, Brown, Menno and Union townships, I was told.

Pulling out my records, I reread the opening line of James’ 1816 will: “In the name of God Amen I James Adams of Union Township....”

Where, I asked, is the Union Township office?

Belleville.

“We have to get to Belleville before town hall closes,” I said, hustling Dad into the car.

Barely making it in time, we learned of two old graveyards. At the Old Lutheran Cemetery, I parked across the narrow road from the lot and knocked on the door of a house to see what the occupants might know.

It turned out that the owner, Forrest Kauffman, had restored the site and knew the markers well. Unfortunately, said Kauffman, a local historian, the earliest grave was too late for James Adams.

But, he said, there was one more cemetery in the area that had older graves. He agreed to ride with us a couple of miles to the West Kishacoquillas Presbyterian Cemetery, which lies next to a small brook at the edge of farm fields in the heart of the valley. Its oldest grave dates to 1781.

As an occasional Amish horse-drawn buggy clopped by, Dad, Forrest and I began reading the headstones, walking up and down each row, peering closely at names that in many cases were nearly illegible.

Finally, about in the middle of the site, the name appeared: Adams.

Clearly etched into a headstone was the inscription, “JESSE ADAMS

From family genealogies, we recognized the names of a son and daughter-in-law of James Adams.

Just to the right of their markers lay an uneven and bumpy plot, noticeable for its lack of a headstone.

Could this be James Adams’ grave?

“I would say that is where your ancestor is buried,” Forrest Kauffman said. “The headstone was probably lost. I would say it’s very likely that’s the spot.”

We stood quietly on the grass, greening up in early spring. I took a snapshot of my father there.

While I couldn’t say with certainty that this was indeed the spot, I felt that I’d eliminated all other possibilities. I believed that I’d found James Adams’ grave. For the first time since my quest had begun, I felt a sense of relief, as if a burden had been lifted from my shoulders.

Yet finding James’ burial site, I began to realize, was really secondary to finding a way to honor his memory. That was my real obsession. I took satisfaction in the part in this search played by my son and my father, with whom I would not have another adventure like this; he died in 2004.

We left the cemetery as the sun began to sink toward the ridge, crossing the valley to where a small stone house sits near Kishacoquillas Creek. Two Amish boys in overalls and straw hats fished from a bridge nearby.

Kauffman said he remembered seeing a mill there as a boy. A local history refers to a mill marking the property where James Adams had lived in the early 1800s.

One final chore remained for me.

First, I sought approval from the local cemetery board to erect a headstone in memory of a local son who served in the American Revolution. The board readily agreed.

Then, at my request, the Veterans Administration ordered a granite headstone. The inscription:

JAMES ADAMS, Capt., 5 Battalion Cumberland Co. Associators, Pa. Militia, Rev. War. 1734-1824.

The marker stands in his honor for the first time this Memorial Day, 2005.