Over the years my mother's family held several fairly large family reunions. They began many years before my mom was born in 1916 or I was born in 1942. They were usually held in east Texas where the Grays, Willises, and Streetmans had settled in Anderson and Houston Counties as early as 1848 and continued to migrate to the Elkhart, Slocum, and Grapeland areas through the early 1900s from Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.
The Charles Mack Streetman family was made up of eleven sons and four daughters. The oldest three children were by his first wife Mary Margaret Cook and the remaining living children were by his second wife Clara Parasota Cook. Surely these seventeen family members would be a family reunion.
Growing up, my mother's siblings and their families often met at my grandparents' home in Cleveland, Texas. The first reunion I went to was in the late 40s. On this occasion, all the grown children and their offspring, the first cousins, including me, showed up at once. I do not believe that it was planned in advance. I recall twenty-one of us with my grandparents, their four children and spouses, and eleven of us grandchildren who were born by that time. I recall sleeping on a pallet inside in front of the open front door.
My grandmother canned most of their food and my grandfather took care of the gardens and chicken yard. We all learned to dodge the chicken poop in the chicken yard to go to the outhouse. We grandchildren took baths in the kitchen on the kitchen table in the galvanized tub. We all learned to play checkers with Grandpa and he knew how to beat us every time. We learned our manners from our grandmother, known as "Granny Gray", as well as from our parents. The grownups enjoyed taking the straightbacked cane or rope chairs into the front yard after supper (in Texas, that is) and visiting with each other in a circle in the cooler evening. They usually talked Texas politics or traded jokes. "Granddaddy Gray" or "Grandpa" as he was called by both names, used to put the grandchildren in the wheelbarrow and push us all around the front and side yards.
In today's world, we are carrying on the time-honored tradition of family reunions. Our family reunions may not have as many people at them, but the intent and the joy of being together is still the same. These are family reunions because they include family members from our family from three states with mine and my husband's second marriages of 31 years. We have always celebrated holidays with each other as much as possible, as well as birthdays and anniversaries.
These special events mark the most memorable occasions for family reunions in my mind in recent years:
In 2005, my husband and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. Our six children and most of the fifteen grandchildren surprised us by showing up one by one during the special weekend which culminated in special picture taking and surprising us with a special cake at our monthly antique airplane association potluck meeting.
Three years ago sixteen of our family cruised together from Seattle to Alaska. That was fun with all six children, four spouses, and four grandchildren.
Four years ago I retired from working, and fifteen of our family members surprised me with a retirement weekend, including five children, three spouses, and five grandchildren.
A special family reunion was for was my husband's 76th birthday. At that family reunion, there were twenty-two family members: all six children, four inlaws, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Some stayed in our home, in our apartment, or in a motel.
A recent family reunion was to celebrate our oldest son's 50th birthday in Wichita, Kansas. Nineteen family members from three Kansas towns, two Oklahoma towns, and two Texas towns came together to spend the weekend in two Kansas homes and one motel. Our ages ranged from 7 to 77 and included two grandparents, five children, two inlaws, nine grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.
If you read this far, you may think: Where are the missing children when these family reunions are going on? Some need to work, some are in college, some have other conflicts, some grandchildren live far away in Minneapolis, or Fort Riley, Kansas, and will be deployed to Afghanistan soon. Our newest grandchild was born on July 28th, 2009.
I am indebted to my first cousin David Snow, formerly of Austin, Texas, and now of San Jose, California and my second cousin Ivey Maurice Brinson of Highlands, Texas for adding photographs and information from the early days of our families in east Texas.
This blog post was updated January 22, 2012 by Linda Sue Hollingsworth Littlejohn Robbins
