Photos around Cape Archives

October 30, 2012January 18, 2022

Neely’s Landing Cemetery

Coming back through Neely’s Landing, I slowed down to see if there was any trace of a cemetery I had heard was on the top of one of the hills, but I didn’t see one nor any way to get up there. I’m still curious about the mass grave for the victims of the fire aboard the steamboat The Stonewall that killed between 200 and 300 passengers in 1869. When I got to the curve behind Proctor & Gamble, I turned around and cruised back north.

I spotted a couple – Roger and Rebecca – in front of a mobile home jacked way up on concrete blocks. Rebecca was walking a pit bull sporting what looked like a logging chain. I was a little uncomfortable for a bit, because I figured an animal that required a chain that big would have been able to drag the young woman like a cartoon character. The dog was either friendly or figured I wasn’t worth eating, because he didn’t appear aggressive.

Roger and I chatted a bit about how high the last flood got – “It came all the way up to the bottom of the trailer. When a barge would go by out on the river, the wave would lap up against the bottom of the floor. We had to take a boat to go all the way around the curve to where we were parked.”

I could cut through his lot

I asked about the cemetery. He said there was a road going up to it, but it was blocked off by a gate. I was welcome to cut through the back of his lot to get to it. “Is that your wife in the car?” he asked.

“Nope, that’s my mother. She turned 91 last week.”

“I don’t think she’ll be able to make it.”

Cemetery popped into view

“I’m not sure I can make it, but I wouldn’t bet against her.”

The road WAS fairly steep, but in decent condition. It had seen chat at some time in the past and it wasn’t too rutted. Just about the time I ran out of hill and breath, the cemetery popped into view.

Tree cut down

A storm must have taken down a big tree recently, based on the fresh sawdust around the stump. It damaged a few tombstones, but the cemetery was fairly well maintained.

Quiet and peaceful

The late afternoon sun made the east-facing tombstones hard to shoot, but I like the play of light anyway.

How old was Louisa Ross?

I couldn’t be sure if Louisa M. Ross was 100 years, one month old when she died or if she was a baby one month old. It’s hard to make out if she was born in 1802 and died in 1902 or if she was born and died in 1902. When I shot the photo, I was pretty sure it was 1802 and 1902.

FindAGrave.com lists 74 interments in the cemetery. There are two with the name Ross: Baby Girl Ross, daughter of S.H. and S.J. Ross, born and died June 12,1900, and Sarah J. Ross, wife of S.H. Ross, who was born Feb. 6, 1893, and who died Aug. 25, 1904. The Louisa M. marker is prominent enough and old enough that I would have thought it would have made the listing.

Not the Stonewall cemetery

I don’t think The Stonewall’s mass grave is up there..

There’s not a lot of flat ground in the cemetery that would lend itself to a mass grave
It’s a steep climb up the hill.
It didn’t look like it would be easy digging.
The locals would figure the steamboat victims were strangers, so they would probably not want to take up the limited space where their families were going to be buried.
A spot closer to the river would be easier to reach and easier to dig.

A view of the Mississippi

Here’s a view of the river looking to the south from Neely’s Landing. If I knew exactly where The Stonewall went aground, I might poke around while the river is low. Newspaper reports pieces of broken queensware, coal, nails, bits of iron and even bones were still being found on the Stonewall Bar 67 years after the disaster.

Photo gallery of Neely’s Landing Cemetery

Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.

October 29, 2012September 29, 2013

Leaves and Hanging Dog Rock

Some days you think you’re going to post some pretty pictures and go to bed early. Then, unfortunately, you start doing a few searches and find yourself going off in all kinds of tangents.

On October 20, Mother and I took the back roads from Perry County down CR 535 through Neely’s Landing and into Cape. I wanted to see if I could find the mass grave from the 1869 Steamboat Stonewall tragedy that killed between 200 and 300 people. I found A cemetery, but I’m pretty sure it’s not THE cemetery. More about that later. (You can click on the photos to make them larger.) The green patch at the end of the road is Dog Holler, just down the road from the High Hill Church and Cemetery.

Obsessed with dogs

Friend Shari and I stopped in at a new restaurant in Pocahontas (more about that later, too). The owner said she and her husband live on a farm in what they call Dog Holler and pointed to a map on the wall (where it is officially known as Dog Hollow). I knew that area. It’s a neatly cleared valley surrounded by rugged hills with wild timber. Just after you go around a curve, you pass a driveway with “Dog Holler” on it.

The time waster was when I decided to look more closely at the map and saw somebody was doggone dog-obsessed. There was Dog Hollow; Hanging Dog Rock; Dog Island; Hanging Dog Creek. Another map showed Hanging Dog Island.

Hanging Dog Rock survey marker

I didn’t find out how the rock got its name, but I found a mention of it in the Results of Spirit Leveling in Idaho, 1896 to 1914, Inclusive, Issues 565-569. To my surprise, the book wasn’t dealing with whether spooks in Idaho were off-kilter. It was a listing of United States Geological Survey markers.

There is one located at “Neely Landing, about 4,000 feet below, 3 feet north of east-west rail fence, on land of Mr. Wagner, between the St. Louis & San Francisco R.R. and the river, about in line with outer point of Neely Landing and highest trees on top of bluff below Hanging Dog Rock, 45 feet east of lower headblock of Neely siding, 115 feet north of cattle guard; iron pipe (U.S.C.E. b.m. triangulation Dutch) (lat 37° 29′ 22.58″; long 89° 29′ 45.57″). It is 350.87 feet above mean sea level.

If you go to page 5 of the book, you can see what all those abbreviations mean and how the makers were placed. Took me right back to Ernie Chiles’ Earth Science class.

Two steamers sunk off Hanging Rock

An 1867 report to the Secretary of War listed two unknown steamers sunk in the Mississippi river off Hanging Dog Rock. This was two years before The Stonewall burned in the general vicinity.

For what it’s worth, the report also mentioned two unknown steamers sunk at Old Cape; Talisman, collision, foot Cape Girardeau bend, and two unnamed steamers at the foot of Cape Girardeau bend. That’s about where the barges broke away and sank earlier this month.

[By the way, for my friends who are ghost chasers and UFO fanatics, the light blue object in the sky and the orange orb at the right are not flying saucers and ghostly images; they are internal lens flare caused by shooting almost into the sun.]

You may get more leaves

I thought I had run out of leaf pictures, but they keep showing up when I look at what I’ve taken on this trip. There aren’t many fresh ones to shoot, though. They’re either turning brown or they’ve fallen.

Polarizing filter

I keep a Hoya polarizing filter on my lens almost all of the time. It’s particularly important when you’re shooting colorful foliage. Not only does it make the sky a nice, dark blue, but, more importantly, it cuts through the reflections ON the leaves, making them appear richer.

Sometimes, though, you don’t want to knock the reflections down. When I walked back to the car after shooting one of these photos, I noticed a really cool reflection in my car windows. If I twisted the polarizer to eliminate the reflection of the trees, all I would have had was a photo of the interior of a messy van. That, of course, was not my goal, so I minimized the effect of the filter.

October 27, 2012March 31, 2016

The Butcher Block (Esicar’s)

If you drove by Esicar’s at 1157 North Kingshighway this week, you might have noticed a neon OPEN sign in the front window. No, Esicar’s isn’t coming back after a March 6, 2011, fire that put it out of business. There’s a new meat store in town: The Butcher Block held its grand opening October 26.

I’m going to mark Day One as a success. When I stopped by Friday afternoon, owner Peter Whisnant and manager Dawn Petersen were so busy waiting on customers that they barely had time to tell me their names. Their new sign was supposed to be up, but it looks like it’ll be the first of the next week before it’s installed. Mail orders will be accepted.You can place an order by calling 573-339-8757 until a website goes up in the next couple of weeks, Peter said.

Owner Peter Whisnant

A Missourian story on October 22 had the new owner’s name spelled with a P on the end instead of a T, but I’m almost positive that I heard T. In addition, I did a search of The Missourian’s archives and saw it spelled with a T in two other stories. I’m going to call The Missourian’s latest name spelling a typo unless I hear otherwise.

Peter, who owns Fruitland American Meat, decided that Esicar’s was the perfect place for a specialty meat market because of the location’s long association with country hams, bacon and sausage.

Kelley bakes the bread

In addition to selling Bunny Bread, the store carries Kelley Whisnant’s own special Mennonite / Italian bread. Right now, she’s baking about nine loaves of bread a day (while chasing Daughter Abbigail, 1).

“What happens if you become a success and you need 25 or 30 loaves a day,” I asked.

“I guess I’ll just have to get a bigger mixer,” she replied. “Maybe that’s what I’ll get for Mother’s Day.”

Earlier stories about Esicar’s

The Butcher Block photo gallery

Here’s a collection of photos taken in and around the store. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to mover through the gallery.

October 25, 2012October 25, 2012

Speaking to the D.A.R.

The Nancy Hunter chapter of the Cape Girardeau Daughters of the American Revolution invited me to speak on the topic “Fifty Years of Looking Through a Lens.” After it was over, one of the members snatched my camera out of my hands and turned it on Mother and me. I feel much more comfortable on the taking end of pictures, but I actually like this photo. The publications in the foreground are some of the works I’ve produced in the past two years.

Certificate and pin

Regent Charlotte Slinkard presented me with a Certificate of Award for an Outstanding Program. (She had it made up in advance, which indicates she had a higher level of confidence in my abilities than I have.) She also gave me a Bicentennial of the War of 1812 American Flag pin. Regent Slinkard is second from the right in this photo.

She should save something for the funeral

LaFern Stiver, center, introduced me. She’s Friend Shari’s mother. If I had known she was going to say so many nice things, I’d have asked her to save some of them back for my funeral. You really shouldn’t shoot up all your fireworks at the beginning of the evening. You need to hold something back for the grand finale. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

Ancestors fought in the Revolution

Mother is sitting at the far end of the table. To her left is Mary Lee Rassmussen who is her second cousin (I think). She had done research on the Adkins side of Mother’s family that goes all the way back to Scotland. A couple of our ancestors were slain by Indians shortly before the Revolution, and we had relatives who fought in the war. She didn’t find any of the horse thieves that Mother has always been afraid would turn up if we too highly up the family tree.

Library has great facilities

The Cape library has some of the best facilities I’ve seen. I always bring all of the equipment I need to put on a show without relying on screens, projectors, sound systems and the like to be there and to work. The library was great: they had shades that darkened the room; the screen came down from the ceiling with the push of a button. All I had to do was to plug my laptop computer into a jack that connected to a ceiling-mounted projector and to connect another wire to the audio output. It was the cleanest and fastest setup I’ve ever had.

I’m sorry to say that I missed getting a photo of a woman who claimed she taught me to swim when I was four years old. Mother and I compared notes later and think she may have been thinking about Brothers Mark and David. I clearly remember taking swimming lessons at the Capaha Pool when I was about 10, not four. I knew from the moment that my skin touched that early June pool water that this boy was not cut out for any sport that requires you to crack the ice before you can participate in it. I finally learned how to swim at Boy Scout Camp Lewellen when I was about 13. The water in the St. Francis River in mid-summer was acceptably warm.