The Grave of a "Witch"

While going through my pictures over my lunch hour, I came across this one. Back in August, when we went to the Balloon Festival in Lincoln, we took a little side trip to do some geocaching. This was a virtual geocache that was intriguing to me.

I couldn't find the dates on when the woman died but by the looks of the tree and the way the tree has grown through the fence, it was a long time ago. Nobody even remembers the woman's name. All they remember is she was a young woman who often challenged the Amish beliefs and spoke her mind freely. This wasn't looked up wisely with the Amish and eventually the woman disappeared. A few days later, she was found, dead in a field, even though she was young, nobody in the community questioned the decision that she died of natural causes. When she was buried, the community planted a tree on top of her grave, to keep her spirit from escaping because she had been branded a witch.

It was WAY off the beaten path to get to this place, I love geocaching, if you have a GPS, you need to check out geocaching.com. We try to find a few places to go find little treasures wherever we go. By the way, this is outside an amish community called Chesterville, just a few miles from Arcola.