The next destination on my Virtual Hike was East Union, Kentucky.

The previous destination on my virtual hike was Stepstone Creek, Kentucky.

You can see in the map above that it is only 17.6 miles from Stepstone Creek.

The virtual route was through rural areas and was often lined by long fences used to pasture horses.

It also passed by many farms and fields.

There was one small town that the route went through, but mostly the route was lined with fields or trees.

The virtual hike finally made it to East Union and more specifically the East Union Christian Church. The building is a new building, but it was built near to where the  Hinkston Creek or East Union Dunkard church was located.

My final destination was the East Union Cemetery which is located just to the west. In the map above it was just above East Union near where the creeks come together.

In the past couple virtual hike posts I have been talking about Peter Hon, and he is buried in the cemetery here. The East Union church became part of the Restoration Movement in the mid 1820’s when the Blue River Baptist Association, Brethren Association (also known as the Hoosier Brethren) and New Lights (Barton W. Stone) merged together. It was later in 1832 when this group was joined by the followers of Alexander Campbell.

The East Union church was founded in about 1800 when a group of Dunkards came to Kentucky from North Carolina. Include in this group were Jonas Hon, John Sears and Christian Kern. The Kern’s lived right by the East Union church building. I saw a map which showed this, but haven’t been able to find it again.

John Sears was the step-brother of Jonas Hon who became the minister of East Union. Jonas was the father of Peter Hon. Many of the Hon, Sears and Kern descendants were preachers in the Restoration Movement.

Now that I am virtually in Kentucky I have made my way to where some of my ancestors and families lived in the early 1800’s and also where a significant religious event took place. I will spend some time in this area visiting a few other places and building on the history shared in this and previous posts.

Most of the next stops will have family connections as well as connections to early Restoration Movement History.

I am still working on the route past this area as I have learned a lot more about how migration routes changed as the frontier pressed further west.

Steven

Images in this post are from Google Maps and Street View

WwRI – Written With Real Intelligence