Searching for Abraham Luzadder

While I was working on the Salt Fork State Park book this summer, I spent alot of time trudging through poison ivy, waist high grass, and thickets of multiflora rose searching for old house foundations and cemeteries. July and August aren't the ideal time for this kind of searching, but with a book deadline looming, I wanted to gather as much information as I could before sending it off to the press. The one location I was never able to find--despite repeated efforts in the summer heat--was the grave of Abraham Luzadder. Abraham Luzadder (or Lieuzaderre, or Lieuzadder) was a Franco-American from Virginia who was a private in George Rogers Clark's Revolutionary War expedition into the west. He fought at the Battle of Kaskaskia, in which American forces defeated the British and their Indian allies. After the war, he moved with his family to the Ohio country, and settled on property that is now part of Salt Fork State Park. Local legend has it that one day Luzadder was alerted that a party of Indians were raiding cabins in the area, so he placed all of his money in a crock and hid it in the woods. A short time later, Luzadder died, and on his deathbed his family asked him where he hid the money. According to this legend, he gasped the words "Tree . . . Spring. . . unhhh" and then drew his last breath. The pot of money has never been found.

The original grave marker was replaced with a veteran's stone sometime early in the 20th century. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution added an additional marker to the spot. A descendant of Abraham Luzadder mailed me a packet of information about the family. I also had some very old plat maps that indicated where the Luzadder property was located. But finding the actual grave proved to be a challenge. I encountered lots of old-timers who recalled visiting the spot when they were young. They gave me directions that went something like this. "You go down Beeham Run road. When you see an old hunting road on the left, don't go down that. Go to the next old road that's not there any more. If you follow that one about a mile through the woods you'll come to a farmer's field. It's in a clump of trees in that field."

Despite these nonsensical directions, after several exploratory missions, I managed to find the farmer's field. While the Luzadder land is now Park property, part of it is leased to local farmers to grow sunflowers and corn. This actually creates a valauble edge environment--between forest and field--where deer come to feed at dusk and dawn. And the deer certainly appreciate feasting on the farmer's corn. The field stretches out in fingers in several directions, covering all of the relatively flat land on top of several ridges. And there are quite a few "clumps of trees" and windbreaks in the field. Searching for the grave in the August heat--covered head to toe to protect myself from poison ivy, multiflora rose, and mosquitos--was an exercise in futility and rapid dehydration. The clumps and windbreaks were impenetrable at that time, and I could have easily passed within a few feet of Luzzader's grave and not found it. I even contacted the farmer who leased the land from the state, and he had never seen the grave. I was beginning to wonder it was really out there.

Late fall or winter held more promise for searching, but I avoided the area in late fall because Salt Fork State Park is immensely popular with hunters at that time of year, and rustling around in clumps of tree when the hunters were out seemed like a very bad idea. This week was Spring break at the College, so I called my friend and fellow kayaker Craig "Stick" Stickelmeyer to see if he wanted to go out there and help me search. Stick is an outdoorsman to the core. He is a tree trimmer, a hunting guide, and writes a hunting column for the local newspaper. And like me he just loves exploring the woods. We met at Salt Fork and hiked up to the field. It was a perfect morning. The sun was shining and the temperature was in the 20s, but it was rapidly rising. It would reach 60 degrees by afternoon. The plowed ground of the farmer's field was still frozen and easy to cross. Within a few hours it would be a boot-sucking mud field, so it was good we got an early start. We split up and searched various clumps and the perimeter of the field. After about two hours, I was pretty sure we must be in the wrong field, and just as I was about to give up I spotted it--not in a clump of trees but on the edge of the forest, behind a patch of multiflora rose, but in a clearing of sorts. I took the GPS coordinates so I could find it again--and post them online--and pulled out the digital camera to get some pics. The batteries were dead, but I managed to get off one single shot of it before the camera shut down. I called Stick over, and he took some pics with old fashioned film. Stick asked me some questions about Luzadder, including what religion he might be, and when I told him that as a Frenchman born in the 18th century there was a good chance he was Catholic, Stick pulled a rosary out of his hunting jacket and dropped in on the stone for Old Abraham Luzadder. On the return journey we found the remains of an old house foundation, including an old squared off timber, that might have been the site of Luzadder's home. We also found a spring, and a line of old oaks that just might have been there when Abraham died in 1826. But no pot of money. When we got back to the car, I gave Stick the packet of information about Luzadder and suggested he write a column about him. And Stick gave me something too--his hand-carved cedar walking stick, decorated with a deer antler. But the search for Abraham Luzadder is over. He's been found--not for the first time, but perhaps for the first time in recent years. And with the magic of GPS technology, perhaps he will never be lost again.