It’s a banner day of banners around here. I laid out the photos and the videos and put in the appropriate segment pieces up and everything here goes under one of our old familiar pieces of art.

I got in a 21-mile ride this evening. It was one of those, What if I went straight at that one intersection, instead of left or right? Where would I wind up? rides. The best kind of ride.

Going that particular direction, you’re bound my geography anyway. The river is out there somewhere. But after I passed that intersection, pedaled through some tree covered roads and dodged a few potholes, I got to a new stretch of road.

What is down there?

It’s a wonderful feeling. You’re about to see something new. And maybe it’ll be regular fields and houses. But they’ll be new houses. And you’ll be able to wonder who is on their way to that house? Who is the light on for?

Or maybe it’ll be something surprising, big or small. There was a small surprise near the very end of that road. A lovely suburban farmhouse style home on a great big lot. Next to it was an oversized produce store. It looked like a family operation, perhaps the same people ran it as lived next door. At least that’s the way the landscaping felt. It was large and looked great. Better than most of the houses, and there were a few nice spreads on that road.

Here are two more brief clips from last week’s concert. “Yoke” was the last track on 2011’s “Beauty Queen Sister,” and it became one of my favorites in their whole catalog almost right away. It feels like an Amy Ray song. And Lyris Hung’s violin, which sounds like a circus organ, an ethereal cacophony, a mental high wire act. All of it just sticks in the head, not an earworm, but something even more potent. And this part, right here …

Again, we were about a quarter of a mile away, so please excuse the visual quality.

This one was the second single from their 1997 record, the second track on that record, and I’m pretty sure everyone fell in love with it in about two seconds of the first time they played it. It takes less time for a crowd to voice their approval when they play it live, and so they play it live all the time.

It’s a historically important song. When my lovely bride and I were just dating, we were on a trip and playing this song. It’d been a good weekend after a long week and the sun was shining and the road was long and actually using an actual map — as one did back then — and singing along.

I don’t sing in front of people. We’d only been dating for a few months and there was that barrier dissolved. Music makes you vulnerable. And now here we are, all these years later.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, wherein I am discovering the county’s historical markers via bike rides. This is, I believe, the 45th installment, and the 77th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. This one is a new marker for an old site. It’s not even in the marker database yet. I visited it only because I saw it out of the corner of my eye while riding to another site a few weeks ago.

The history of this cemetery is not well documented. An article appeared in the January 6, 1941 Standard and Jerseyman that indicated that Mrs. Lydia Fox Kelty had paper records in her possession which showed that her father, Robert Fox, was a direct descendant of James McGill, who donated one acre of his farm to Alloway Township, in which residents of the township were to be buried free of charge. Research of family records reveal that Robert Fox was the son of Charles H. Fox (1845-1929) and Lydia Megill (1846-1897). Lydia Megill was the daughter of John Megill (1805-1883) and Elizabeth Margaret Shaw (1810-1881). John Megill was the son of James Megill (1780-1842) and Margaret Mower (1788-1824).

Per the newspaper article, James McGill was the great-grandson of Rev. James MacGill who came to America from Scotland in 1725. Several of Rev. MacGill’s grandsons settled in Salem, and one, Patrick MacGill, a blacksmith, settled in Allowaystown. James McGill, who gave the ground, was Patrick’s son. James McGill, his family and a number of soldiers of the American Revolution are buried in this old cemetery. Research of the June 1793 tax records confirm that Patrick McGill lived in Alloway.

According to the article, this gift was made by James McGill in the year 1810-11, when he learned that the owners of the cemeteries in this vicinity refused to allow soldiers of the American Revolution to be buried without buying a lot. This so incensed Mr. McGill, whose father and uncle had served in the Revolution, that he gave the aforementioned ground to the citizens of Alloway Township. Unfortunately, the deed documenting this gift could not be found in the Salem County archives. Burial records are incomplete and many of the early gravestones are no longer legible, and documentation has not been found to identify what Revolutionary War soldiers are buried here.

Some of the earliest known burials include: Elizabeth Bee 1768-1832, James Bell 1756-1830, Rebecca Sweeten Bell 1767-1806, Jesse Earley 1786-1867, Peter H. Emel 1778-1823, Esther Emmel 1786-1847, Martha McCormack 1777-1806, John Mowers 1760-1822, Lydia Johnson Mowers 1765-1807, Anna Simms 1798-1855.

There are still McGills in that community, and dozens and dozens more in the broader area. The cemetery has 158 memorials, but among the unknown things are if any stones have disappeared in the last 200 years. And while the marker and the people that put it together have come up short on Revolutionary War veterans that are buried here, we know at least 10 Civil War veterans and two WWII veterans are at rest on McGill’s old land. One of those Civil War veterans served for all of two-and-a-half months. He died, in camp, of a fever.

The rest are normal people. And that’s rather the point, isn’t it? In the end, we’re all the same. Husbands, wives, their families. Old and much-too-young. There are carpenters and farmers and a firefighter who died on the job. There are 158 markers and at least that many stories that have been passed down and then gotten blurry and then forgotten. The sign says it is still an active cemetery. I believe the most recent burial was in 2003, of a widow who outlived her husband by 43 years. She was 25 when she got married, and 39 when she lost her husband. She lived half her life as a widow, and made it to see 83 or 84. I wonder what it was like for her to go by that place, or go to that place, to see her husband. It’s been 21 years since she joined him, and you wonder about those memories. As far as I can tell, there’s no one in that community with their family name.

Rebecca Sweeten Bell, one of those earliest burials, in contrast, has a huge list of descendants in the region. The man who is recorded as the oldest member of the cemetery was John Mowers. He died at 62, but in just six generations we can get to a descendant of his who is buried elsewhere, having died just last year. You wonder how far the memories reached back, even as you know why they sometimes don’t. For in the end, we’re all the same, but it’s still a bit uneven.

Next week’s marker feature is still a mystery to me. You’ll just have to come back to see what I’ve found. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.