There's a little cemetery south of Carbondale, near Makanda where we have ancestors. This is Mary A Pollet Morgan, who passed in 1870, a month after giving birth to Francis Lee Morgan, one of my great-grandfathers. The problem is, Carbondale was the focus of he Eclipse Crowd. I-57 was going to be jammed on this day, also Hwy 13 that goes to Carbondale from the Interstate, and Makanda was being mobbed. If we got there, we would also have to get home, and it's a two hour drive when the traffic is easy.
Click on the photos to enlarge.
We studied the eclipse maps, and we didn't have to go far to get into totality. We settled on Thompsonville. Good highways there, and we could take off into the country on township roads to get a bit farther south.
We stumbled on the Liberty Methodist Church and graveyard just as the eclipse was beginning. The only other person here was a man mowing the lawn, and he was just ready to leave.
We have witnessed partial eclipses before, so this was quite familiar. My welding helmets have #10 filters, so I doubled the filters on a helmet to be safe, thus the ghost image.
Susan had some genuine Eclipse Glasses, and they were effective, too.
Susan also made a pinhole camera, and we all had a good time with that.
It's getting closer!
We thought is was supposed to cool down! Here Susan is fanning her mother.
Pattie could not lean back or raise her head far enough to look directly at the sun, so Susan held her up as totality came on. Everybody tore off their protection and we were amazed to see the corona show. We could see wisps reaching out and coming back to the sun, plus the roughness of the moon, and the diamond ring effect at the beginning and end.
The next one in seven years comes right over little old Belle Prairie, so we won't have to move an inch to watch it! We got really lucky today. We could see vertical development in clouds all around us, but it was clear overhead. The crowd in Carbondale had overcast, and one report we heard said that they got to see 3 seconds of the eclipse. We got a full 1 minute, 20 seconds at our private showing just out of Thompsonville, IL.
2 comments:
I'm glad you posted about that cemetery. My wife's father's people came from Southern IL, and we photographed the grave of Jacob Halterman and others. On this branch, she is also descended from Andrew Jackson Morgan and the Morgan family. I wonder if you and my wife are kin! Thanks again for the post. Have a good weekend.
Mary A Morgan's husband was Jesse Morgan. ( There are also some other Morgan relatives there, but I will have to look them up.) Jesse remarried and moved to Ventura, California. Francis Lee grew up and moved back to the Midwest, eventually settling in Washington, Iowa. He passed in 1927. Jesse was in the 62nd IL Infantry and was captured along with the rest of his regiment at Holly Springs, MS by Earl Van Dorn. There is some interesting history that goes with that story, and I should write that up.
This cemetery is just west of the turnoff for Makanda on Hwy 51. Lat and lon: 37.613156°N, 89.245828° W
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