May 20 - Canton OH to Lancaster OH

Actually got a good nights sleep. My head is swollen from out-moteling the master. I promised that tonight we stay in a real chain type hotel. I think we saved enough to stay in the Ritz. So we worked on a "when to not stay somewhere" clue list. Chevy on blocks in the motel parking lot is a bad sign. "No refunds after 5 minutes"is a bad sign. Grey towels is a bad sign. Full sized refrigerator in the room is a bad sign. RotoRooter magnets on above refrigerator is a bad sign. Cars with no plates in the parking lot is a bad sign. Vans with "GO AHEAD AND HIT MY TRUCK SO I CAN TRY OUT MY NEW GUN" stickers is a bad sign. Broken concrete flower pots in front of the lobby is a clue.
Today we asked and found the place where locals get breakfast. Pete's was great. The goal was to find out long lost ancestor who moved from Dummerston in 1814 to Ohio. We started in Millersburg OH and checked the town offices. They very nicely pointed us to the genealogy canter at the Millersburg library. The lovely women there helped us find some basic stuff, but something was not adding up. It turns out there is a "Miller Township" in the next county (Knox) just south of Mt Vernon. They gave us the address of the library over there, which we found, and after an hour of pouring over the obituaries, town history and census books, we hit paydirt with an Ohio Cemetery book. We found a small cemetery listed with James Miller, his wife Sarah and a Henry Miller who was born in "Dunerstin VT" We got the address, punched it into Dave's GPS and half an hour later found a tiny old cemetery in the middle of a field on Miller Road.

The stones were old and hard to read but we found James (the flat one falling over), his wife and one of his children (Dana Miller). But no other Millers. The library had an excerpt saying that the Millers disappeared after 2 generations. So maybe they kept going west, or gold rush, or?? Anyway, we can understand why they moved here. Not a rock anywhere and lots of open farmland. I bet the letters home to Vermont were rubbing in how long the season was and how easy it was to farm.
So we did maybe 150 miles with all the library hopping but it was a neat day. Beautiful weather and bright green rolling farmlands on lost 2 lane paved roads. Stopped early in Lancaster for a "real" hotel. We agreed we could do this for a long long time.