First Shot at Using Google Earth to Find the Eckhart Mansion

Last Tuesday went to a North San Diego County Genealogical Society presentation on using Google Earth for genealogy. I had fiddled with GE but hadn't a clue as to how to put this awesome tool to work for me.

As the presentation came to a close it popped into my newbie head that since I already knew where my ancestor, John Eckhart (1768 - 1835), son of George Adam Eckhart (1729 - 1806), had his home and land called the Eckhart Mansion I could fly over using GE. So off I went to fly over the south side of Frostburg, Maryland, down the hill from the Foodline, and high above the village of Eckhart and Eckhart Mines!

Here's the screen capture, saved and punched up in PhotoShop. See for yourself.

Here's a screen shot of the left hand section of the above image.

Is it just me or does that look like the footprint of a house and two out buildings in the upper left quadrant? The two out buildings would be to the left of the house and smaller. The Eckharts owned slaves, sad to say, and the reports of the time mention slave quarters. Wish I was an archaeologist and knew what I was looking at!

I emailed my brother and asked him to check it out and he did. He says that next time I'm in to visit Mom we'll take his Tahoe 4-wheel drive vehicle and ride down there.  What I'm really curious about is the center of the green mound on the right of the second image above. Is it a target for archery or shooting (folks do own guns there and enjoy target practice) or some other stone structure?

There was also on old family cemetery there and subsequent owners dozed it all over demolishing the old stones. (Don't ask me if I'm bitter... the answer is yes. People, you know who you are!) I'd really like to take that Tahoe and go looking for it.

Last time I was visiting Mom I tried climbing down from Foodline, but alas, I have a bad knee so felt like at least two of the Three Stooges sliding on down and crawling back up;) Tahoe, here I come!