More on Polly's grave

      When I was working on my book, a man who lived around Yarrowsburg told me that when he was a boy, he was shown two plain stones that stood upright in a field near Yarrowsburg Road. One was Polly's grave; the other was her son's grave according to what he remembered.  So one Saturday, he and I went to look for them. He showed up in big boots and heavy denim jeans with two shovels.  I wore shorts. We spent two hours whacking at the thorny vines along the road with the shovels.  All I had to show for it were some badly scarred legs.  

      I've marked the location on this view from Google Earth.  I've also marked where I was told Polly's house was.  Just north of the abandoned school house.  It's gone now of course.  If she was buried on her property, as The Blue Hills of Maryland said, an unreliable source, then her grave could not have been where we searched.  

      Highway 67 runs up the right side of the image.  This is Pleasant Valley.  Elk Ridge is on the left.  Harpers Ferry is off the image at the bottom left.  The Kennedy Farm, where John Brown and his men stayed for months before the October 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry is marked. In the 19th century, a road went from Yarrowsburg over Elk Ridge and down past the Kennedy Farm.