It was the first day of summer break. We felt like being adventurous so we set off to explore. We followed the creek in a different direction this time and discovered that it led to a sandy “riverishy” creek.
It was beautiful. For 10 years I have lived here but it was hidden….. I never knew about it.
As we walked I kept thinking that this is a moment I will never get back…..a moment of 4 boys excitedly splashing barefoot through the water with an innocence that is beyond precious.
If I could freeze time, I would of frozen this night.
As we were walking back I heard a chainsaw near the bank of the creek.
I wasn’t sure who lived around this area and I felt a bit uneasy. As we got closer I saw a man in a white dirty wife beater standing up on the edge. My first thought was “If I hear banjo music coming out of the trees we are OUTA HERE!!!!” lol
I was just about to “hush” the boys hoping to sneak by under him but Liam was beating Logan with a whipping stick that he had found and they were laughing. The man’s big golden lab rushed down into the creek to join the fun. The man watched the boys but didn’t say anything.
He finally saw me and I gave him a friendly “hello” and we began chatting (because we live in Iowa and that’s what Iowans do) We talked about the creek and he asked if we had found any arrowheads and asked where we lived. I told him we hadn’t and that we lived up the creek up on Clearview Heights. He said “Do you like mystery novels”…I cautiously said “Ummmm……yes?” (there was NO WAY that I was going into his trailer home to look at his mystery novel collection.)
He said ” Have you seen the old cellar?” I cautiously said “Ummmm…..No” (I wasn’t going into an old cellar with him either)
He said that in the 1800s there was a small colony of people who lived right here at the bottom of Clearview Heights and there is still an old cellar from one of the homes. The man and wife who owned that cellar were getting ready to return to Germany but they were murdered. He said he thought their names were “Granger or Grear”. At the top of Clearview Heights is an OLD graveyard. “Wilson Pioneer Cemetery” established in 1830. He told me that they were buried in that cemetery.
He also said that there is a book in the Fort Madison library that tells the story.
I thanked him for the chat and we headed back home. The boys were very excited about this mystery and we decided that we were going to spend the summer trying to figure out more details.
The first thing we wanted to do was find the old cellar. We walked up on the banks and looked through the dead tree swampy grass but we couldn’t find anything.
….except a turtle…..
….and a frog….
I got to thinking that if the cellar were in the “swampy” area it would have filled with water all these years so I think it’s perhaps by the old saw mill. I saw a “mound” and cement on the property that looked “cellarish”. We plan on catching the guy who owns it and ask him if we can look around.
Our next goal was to see if we could find the grave of this man and wife. That would prove if this whole thing was even real.
We walked up to the old pioneer cemetery above our house.
The stones were hard to read but then we found it.
Their names were Heinrich and Margaretha Greaser.
They both died on March 14, 1878, which would make sense if they were murdered on the same day
I think the writing on the stone must be written in German since according to the man in the creek that’s where they were getting ready to return to. 
I found this….
I also found that they were indeed murder victims. 🙁
Sooooo……our summer mystery begins. (I feel like I am on an episode of Scooby Doo).
Everyday the boys ask “Are we going to work on our mystery”???
I’m hoping to try to figure out what book is in the library…..that will give us an inside look of the colony of people who lived behind us. My biggest goal is to find their old cellar!!!
…….stay tuned…..
