Cousins and Kinfolks
Last week I drove my mother to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia (so beautiful) to attend a family reunion for my father's family. It's a huge family and the turnout was good although not really representative of the numbers. My great grandfather Isaac Newton Graham moved from Pendleton, WVA (at the time it wouldn't have been WVA, but we figure he was typical Scots Irish coming down from PA) into that valley and scarfed up quite a bit of land and set about to have a family of six surviving children (Edward, Abraham, Isaac H., Jacob, Bessie, and John Arthur, among others who apparently didn't live too long). Each of them had huge families, and so on. My father had eleven siblings, for instance, and one of them had eight children. So West Augusta county is lousy with Grahams and their kin.
We had gone seven years ago to the annual reunion. I really should go more frequently, but it is a long trip for me. My brother came down from Maryland, so that was a special part of it.
At one point my first cousin, Mary Lynn, and some others were talking about how there really weren't any pictures of any of our parents when they were young, or of our grandparents together, or even great grandparents. We had one picture of my dad at eight, but I don't know where it is, and one of him in his uniform.
"You know how in Cracker Barrel they have those old photographs of people hanging on the walls?" she asked. "Who are those people? Where do they get those pictures?" Which led us to speculate if our relatives were hanging on the walls of Cracker Barrel somewhere.
How would we ever know?
On a very odd note, coming home through the Southwestern VA mountains, I saw something dead on the left side of I-81. It was black, so I thought it would be a dog--but it was very large. When I passed it, I realized it was a bear, and not a young one. It was disheartening.
We had gone seven years ago to the annual reunion. I really should go more frequently, but it is a long trip for me. My brother came down from Maryland, so that was a special part of it.
At one point my first cousin, Mary Lynn, and some others were talking about how there really weren't any pictures of any of our parents when they were young, or of our grandparents together, or even great grandparents. We had one picture of my dad at eight, but I don't know where it is, and one of him in his uniform.
"You know how in Cracker Barrel they have those old photographs of people hanging on the walls?" she asked. "Who are those people? Where do they get those pictures?" Which led us to speculate if our relatives were hanging on the walls of Cracker Barrel somewhere.
How would we ever know?
On a very odd note, coming home through the Southwestern VA mountains, I saw something dead on the left side of I-81. It was black, so I thought it would be a dog--but it was very large. When I passed it, I realized it was a bear, and not a young one. It was disheartening.
Comments