Swearingen Cemetery

 This lovely tree, which looks plenty ominous in the winter and early spring, is beautiful in early fall.  The narrow lane known as Nichol Road meanders beneath it, not even wide enough for most cars.  It's an equestrian's bridle path, for the most part.  Formerly a public thoroughfare.  I have a painter friend who could probably make a nice painting from this photo... I'd sure like to know what kind of tree this is.  My best guess is walnut, though there were no nuts on the ground beneath it.

 Nichol Road is a funny place.  In some spots, it's a nice gravel road that could still accommodate cars, but in other places it's little more than a footpath.  It runs through some scenic country--if you go at the right time of year.  I always think of it as a wintertime place with a slightly eerie feel about it, but that's just because my first visit there was in March when all the trees were dormant, and skies were gray.

The goldenrod is abuzz with bumble bees and other pollinators, though I didn't see any honeybees.  It was a chilly fall morning, and the forest had that sweet, memory-laden scent of rotting leaves.  On the Buckskin and Pinto trails, a lot of ugly blowdowns compromised the beauty of the early autumn forest.  Most of the damage looked recent.  

I'd always been curious about a public lane known as "Swearingen Road."  I used to wonder if it was so named because some kind of "swearing-in ceremony" once took place there.  But no, apparently there are (or have been) in this world people with the surname of "Swearingen."  (There is a village called "Schweringen," which sits halfway between Bremen and Hanover; I wonder if the Family name is an Anglicization?)  They were early settlers of this countryside, and the road is named for them.  Exploring the backroad named in their honor, I came across this curious marker standing at the roadside.  I did not see any headstones, only woods and fields.

It reads: "Swearingen Cemetery: Victims of the last Indian murder in Beaver County are buried here.  Samuel Swearingen settled here in 1785, and in 1790 near this site, his only daughter, Mary, wife of Jacob Colvin, and her infant child were scalped and killed.  They are buried here in the family plot."