The First Trip

This past week, our English class took little field trip to a small cemetery from the 1800s. Our teacher led us down a walking trail, and we wandered off of the main path and onto a dirt one that meandered through the adjacent woods. It smelled of trees, a little damp from the previous rain, and we travelled uphill, further away from where we came. This was no abandoned path, mind you, for the leaves under our feet were trampled and muddy from the various joggers who had been there earlier that day. However, it was quiet and secluded, which was a nice break from the hustle and bustle of the school hallways. After about ten minutes of mild hiking, we reached our destination.

It was not what I expected.

I didn't expect the graveyard to be enormous or anything, but I exp

ected it to be...well, larger that just what seemed to be two graves. We had arrived at a very small, fairly spooky looking cemetery. There was a small gate surrounding it that had been rusted with age; the tops of the gate had all been dented to the left, and a small part of the gate had been bashed down, allowing for our class to climb over the gate and int

o the graveyard. I immediately wondered why the fence had been bashed in. Obviously the perpetrator had ignored the plea to keep out that the lock on a rusty old chain hugging the main gate presented. It also struck me a curious that all of the small spires on the cemetery's gate were bent to the left. Oh well. Maybe I was in the mood for a mystery, who knows? I do that sometimes.

Our teacher told us to examine the graves. All two of them. It actually turned out that the biggest tombstone actually served as a grave for four people, a small family by the name of Scribner. There were four of them, Dr. Dana Scribner (the father), Sara Jane Ansley (the mother), and their two sons, Arthur and William. Sadly, they had both died y

oung, Arthur at 17 months and William at 19. The other grave in the cemetery was located behind a bush, and it was the grave of Mary W. Andrews. I took an immediate interest in this grave, for what was she doing with the Scribner family? It didn't seem like she was of any relation at all, but maybe she was a trusted housekeeper or something. Bu

t why wasn't she buried with her family? Our class noted that there was a small footstone with the initials M.W.A. across from Ms. Andrew's grave. I think our teacher said that that was where her baby was buried. I'm interested to find out her story.

I'm really excited to see how our class is going to develop our excursions into a historical fiction writing project! This little trip really peaked my interest, and I'm excited to find out more about the Scribner family. This is going to be a fun and interesting project!!