Sunday, June 20, 2010

Generations

This weekend I attended the Hath and Henry Reunions.  The Hath Reunion was the first one for this family, started over 70 years ago, but the Henry Family got to be big enough that they wanted to have a reunion for just that branch as well.  So about 50 years ago the Henry Reunion was started.

The minutes from the Henry Reunion always start off - The Descendants of AC and Ida Henry...

Since the descendants of AC (Anderson Campbell) Henry and Ida Hath Henry are both Hath's and Henry's we tended to go to both reunions.

Click on the photos below to enlarge them.


Here are the original descendants of AC and Ida.  It's only one of a handful of times that they were all together.  It could be as high as 7 times come to think of it, so that might be over a handful.

Back Row - Art, Marie, Oscar, Luella, Basil
Front Row - AC, Harry, Bob, Ida and LeRoy
Taken in 1929

All of the kids were my Aunts and Uncles - great Aunts and Uncles - but I didn't know about that kind of stuff at the time.  They were just Aunt Luella, Uncle Oscar, etc.  LeRoy, the handsome one on the end with a bow tie, is my grandfather.

The youngest child in this photo, my Uncle Harry, was at our reunion this weekend.  He's the only one left from this family.




My Uncle Matthew brought along a whole bunch of photos from the beginning of time it seems. This man was Jerome Bonaparte Hath.  He reminds me of the Amish father in "Witness" :)   This is Ida's father, taken around 1918.


Now this photo is the only known picture of Eli Henry (b. 1849).  Eli is the father of AC.  He's the man on the far right hand side in back.  The woman directly in front of him is his wife, Royaletta Artimecia Sarah Ruth Ann Halsted Henry (b.1853)

We like to say that at family gatherings.

or we could do it this way!

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Royaletta.
Royaletta who?
Royaletta Artimecia Sarah Ruth Ann Halsted Henry

Oh, I kid.


It's actually not as much of a mouthful as you might think - it's got some rhythm to it somehow.


This photo was one of the first Hath and Henry gatherings.  Somehow the photo got bent in half as you can see, but my Uncle Matthew spent many many hours retouching this photo to take the crease out of it.


So this is his uncreased version.  Pretty cool how that can happen.  I don't know who the rest of the people are in the photo I'm sorry to say.  My Uncle Matthew knew a few of them, but I didn't get it written down.



This is another photo of AC and Ida Henry's family. This time in 1939. The boy in suspenders, against the wall on the right...that's my grandfather, LeRoy.  He was 17.  I love that photo of him.  He was such a muscly guy.



This photo was taken on 18 June 2010 - just the other day in my Mother's front yard.   What you see here are a lot of the first cousins from the kids of AC and Ida Henry.  Uncle Harry, the last surviving member of AC and Ida's children, was included in the photo.  He was also the very youngest, so it makes sense.  He's the man in the striped shirt in the center front row.

 Last year at the Hath Reunion (I think) it was suggested that the two reunions be combined the following year to see if we could get more people to attend.  It's hard to attend two reunions a year these days and with families spread far and wide, not everyone lives in Michigan anymore!  So the call went out.  Everyone come.  Make plans to attend.  Book your tickets now...and they did.  I came up from Florida because I kept hearing that people were coming in that had never attended a reunion or hadn't been to one in 30 years.  Well, I wanted to be a part of that, so I too, made an effort to come.


I think we ended up with nearly 70 people at the reunion and we decided to officially combine the two reunions.  It's now called the Hath-Henry Reunion and we'll be meeting up on the Saturday of Father's Day weekend.  If you're in the area, come on by.  We had a ton of food :)


I've been very quiet on my blog since I left because I've been doing so much socializing.  We had the cousins reunion on Friday afternoon/evening and the regular reunion on Saturday.  My mom and I had lunch with six family members (Oscar's kids) today - so we've extended this reunion out through several days.  It's been a lot of fun getting to know these people again.  Thanks for coming everyone!

I hope you've been having a great weekend!
Kristin

2 comments:

Debby@Just Breathe said...

What a treat to have those photos.
Love the history lesson and your right, your grandfather LeRoy is buff!

Anonymous said...

I love your family photos and history .. your knock knock joke caught me by surprise and I bust out a laugh.