Zigler Hospitality Center, Church of the Brethren, New Windsor

We have been at our new home in the Zigler Hospitality Center at the Church of the Brethren campus in New Windsor, Maryland since arriving a week ago.

It has been almost a non-stop work assignment since arriving!  Thursday was our first day off, and the first time our car had left it's parking place -- what a change from the long drives every day coming across the country.  It was also the first time we've even had a chance to go grocery shopping!  We eat in the dining hall if there are meals being served, but if there are no meals, we are able to go into the walk-in refrigerators and help ourselves to the leftovers on the "volunteer" shelf.   We do have a small kitchen in our one-bedroom apartment, but other than heating up leftovers, we've not cooked anything yet!  Not my style!  But we have helped with the set up, serving, clean up in the dining hall.

We have a furnished apartment, which is quite comfortable.  New Windsor is a very small town, but the siren for the volunteer firefighters does go off at times, about 3 times one of our first nights, and along with the trucks that somehow need to barrel through this rural community, we are awakened in the night some.  So far, not for emergencies we've had to be responsible for in our guest rooms, though!   We have had the air conditioner and fan on the last few days because it has been in the upper 80's during the day.

This is turning out to be a bigger job than we realized.   We're not just "hosts," checking in guests, making sure they have coffee/tea/snacks when requested for their meetings, but we're also housekeeping (cleaning the guest rooms on weekends if there are guests who arrive the same day other guests leave and we need to have the rooms clean, beds made, etc.) and laundry staff (using the commercial washers/dryers in another building to do all the sheets and towels from the guest rooms), kitchen and dining room help, driving the van to do mail deliveries to the various offices, and miscellaneous other tasks.

We're also responsible for locking/unlocking the main doors at 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.  The evening lock-up is the hardest -- we have been so tired by early evening we've had to set the alarm to make sure we don't sleep through the 10:00 duty!

The ministry that happens here, though, is very impressive.  This is the headquarters for a number of Church of the Brethren Ministries:   SERRV, Brethren Volunteer Service, On Earth Peace, Disaster Ministries, IMA among others.  Heifer Project International started here, interestingly, but no longer has offices on this campus.

Many of the guests who come for overnight stays at the Zigler Hospitality Center are here to volunteer for a day or two at SERRV or Disaster Ministries.  SERRV handles the sale and shipping of orders for their fair-trade handicrafts, coffee and chocolate from third-world countries.  Many local churches provide SERRV items for sale as fund raisers.   Their store here is quite impressive -- we've already started our Christmas shopping.  (You can order on-line, also.)

The Brethren Disaster Ministries distribution center receives relief packages (layette kits, flood relief kits, etc.) and prepares them for shipping to areas where they are needed.  Its a huge operation.  They send teams, like our Volunteers in Mission, to help after disasters, and have a team now in Colorado.  They also have a home rebuilding program.

On Earth Peace is the ministry that Barb Sayler, the choir director at Christ Church United Methodist in Santa Rosa, was co-director of here for a few years.  She and her husband Mark, a UMC minister who also has connections to IMA (an international medical ministry) are the reason we are here in the first place -- they suggested a couple years ago we might be interested in the volunteer host position, and here we are!

The Volunteer Brethren Service program has a 3-week training right now for 24 young people who will be going to various places around the world on one or two year assignments.  We were invited to have dinner with them one night last week -- a simple meal where they are learning to cook meals for their whole group on $1 a day meal allowance.  They were finding out this week where they were being sent, so as they introduced themselves, we were impressed to hear they were going to places like Belfast, Croatia, England, Guatemala, Haiti, Japan, as well as communities all around the United States.

The area around us is beautiful with rolling hills, farm houses, corn fields.  More pictures later as we do more exploring.

Mamaroneck & the Griffens (John's mother's family)

We've mostly gotten around the country just fine with maps and our GPS system that we've named "Rosie."  She had a little trouble in Wilkes-Barre, as we went around in circles a few times.  Then I put in Greenwich, Conn. for our next stop, but didn't realize she decided it was Greenwich, NJ.  We went 30 miles the wrong way on a toll road before I realized the mistake, and then we couldn't get off the turnpike for another 12 miles!  (You need lots of cash, by the way, driving on all the toll roads or turnpikes!)  So we were a little later getting through NYC area and got stuck in 5:00 pm traffic with all the freeway interchanges, trucks and mess of cars.  Then leaving that area on Thursday, we got stuck again  -- the newspaper today said they had a power outage and the interstate was jammed for hours -- we can vouch for it!  Boy are we glad we don't live in NYC!!!!

Later, as we tried to pull off at a "Service Area" (gas, food, restrooms), we somehow missed the right exit, ended up on another toll road that we had to pay to get off of even though we didn't want to be on it, and spent more time driving around in circles before heading in the right direction again!  Whew!  We drove fewer hours/miles on Thursday than this whole trip, and were more exhausted by the time we stopped than any other day!

But we did have a delightful time in the Mamaroneck area once we got there, staying at a BandB,

and just enjoying the area that John's mother's side of the family (Griffen) settled in in the 1600's.  The first Griffen was an interpreter for a man (Richbell) who bought lots of property from the Indians.  There is much documented history in the library that details the land transactions/deeds with the X signatures of the Native Americans.  (We wondered if the Griffen ancestor interpreted well enough for the Natives to know what they were really doing -- selling their land!)

The Griffens built several homes on what is now Griffen Ave.

One of the early homes is still there, with a plaque on the house dating it to 1711.
No one was home so we didn't get to see the inside, but enjoyed just being on the property and seeing the old stone wall that was mentioned in the Griffen book, which details the ancestors back to that first settler in 1635.  I retyped onto the computer the Griffen Story from the typewritten (sometimes from a 4th carbon copy) that documents well the generations from the 1600s.

The multi-million dollar homes now on Griffen Ave. would be a shock to those original settlers, along with the beautiful golf courses and expensive cars.   The downtown was a fun place to walk, eat lunch, explore.  We had lunch at a Mozart Cafe that serves lunch, dessert, coffee, wine and has evening concerts.  In the women's restroom I saw several cases of DeLoach wine stored there, and when I mentioned to the owner (from Bangladesh) that we lived very near DeLoach Winery and were wine club members, he came and sat down with us for awhile.  No free wine, but we were supposed to go back and get a hat he was going to give John the next day, but by then we were on our way to other areas.

And, of course, more cemetery searches and library research.   Many of the Griffens were Quakers, and the Quaker Meeting House in Purchase is still standing next to the cemetery with many Griffens who are buried there.  The gravestones aren't always easy to read, which was particularly true of another cemetery we went to that had not been maintained at all.  But one of the ancestors who had written many pages in her diary (that I re-copied, misspellings and all --and there were many!) was buried there, so I was glad her gravestone was readable.  

We went to a couple different research/historical libraries, and found many of the old maps and documents of the Griffens.  Another village historian, in her upper 80's, was willing to take us to another research area, but indicated she wasn't feeling well, so unfortunately we had to skip what may have been one of the best resource people who could have given us even more info.

This is our last day to pack up the car and move on to the next place, as today we will arrive at our new "residence."  We will be volunteer hosts for two months in New Windsor, Maryland at a Church of the Brethren Retreat Center.

It's been a great trip getting here!

Davenport Genealogy in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

We have enjoyed these last four days of doing family research on John's mother and father's side of the family.  In Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, we found a lot of Davenport graves, and went into a couple of houses on River Street, one that had been owned by his grandfather.  The other home we went into was a gorgeous 3-story mansion that we thought was the home his father grew up in, but learned that the Davenport home had been torn down, probably by the University that now owns most of the buildings in that area.  But his father had lived in a beautiful 3-story house, so we can just imagine it might have been something like the one we went into next door.  The beautiful grandfather clock John now owns was in this River St. house during a flood (the river is right across the street), and has watermarks on the base of the clock to prove it.

The other home that was owned by Davenports is now a Law Office and residence.   When we buzzed the intercom and John told her he was a Davenport, the woman who answered replied "Wheee" and then we didn't hear any more from her.  We were almost ready to walk away when an older woman (who had probably spent time getting dressed up for the occasion) came to the door and was quite excited to meet us.  Her son, the lawyer, was more cautious about who we were, probably wondering why we were "barging" into their home like that!  He's a Public Defender, which might explain his reluctance, but she was quite happy to show us around.  It was a thrill for John to meet someone who knew his family.

We found two cemeteries with lots of Davenport gravestones.  One was quite far up a hill--had to get there on Davenport Street!  There was one whole plot of Davenports -- many we knew about through the Ancestry.com research I've done.  Can't imagine how their horse and buggies made it up that hill as often as they must have for services.  It was a chore for our Prius!

John's grandfather--prominent in Wilkes-Barre

Davenport-Cake (Anna Cake was John's grandmother--
her father very prominent in Wilkes-Barre,
but couldn't find his grave.

Davenport plot, Shawnee Cemetery, Plymouth PA

Driving I-80 cross country

"Driving Through" t-shirt

After 5 days of driving an average of 10 hours a day, and 2750 miles later, we have arrived at our first destination on the East Coast:  Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.  This is where we will do some genealogical research related to John's Davenport family.  Next stop will be in New York to research his mother's side of the family.



On the way, we've seen beautiful skies, sunrises/sunsets, full moons.

Sun coming up over Nevada desert

We've driven across flat deserts, rolling hills, lots of corn fields, and just today (the first day of Fall) an Amish buggy, and the beginnings of gorgeous Fall colors on the tree-covered hills!  That's part of the reason we wanted to take on the responsibility of being volunteer hosts in Maryland in the Fall!


I clapped and thanked God for the fun, safe, long-but-not-boring drive with hubby John.  We've entertained ourselves with audio books (thanks, Browns!), iPad games, NPR news stations when we could get them, and books.

Since we were in the Prius and not pulling a trailer, I enjoyed doing a lot of the driving, but that also meant I couldn't take pictures as easily, so my blog record is a little light on photos.  We stopped often at the big Travel Centers for gas, coffee, potty breaks.
One stop, at a Little America rest stop, a 50 cent ice cream cone.

We were again impressed by how many trucks fill up the Interstate highways and truck stops.  One of the stops in Nebraska had double drive-through lanes at McDonalds and a long wait inside, and the trucks at the fueling station were jammed in a relatively small parking place.  That's Middle America!

The goal on our final travel day was to get to our hotel in Wilkes-Barre (MicroTel -- nice hotel!) in time for John to watch the 49er game.  He wasn't too happy with the result!  We found comfort in "comfort-food" at a Cracker-Barrell restaurant afterwards.  Have to get to at least one Cracker-Barrell on this trip!