Making a Memorable Reunion

Mary and Connie find their husbands in an early reunion photo

Did your family, like ours, have a reunion this summer? It’s not too soon to begin planning your next one—no matter when you want to schedule it.

About sixteen years ago, when my dad and his youngest sister Mary were the only siblings still alive out of the original seven, we began a tradition of getting together every other August. Our reunions not only allow family members of all ages to connect with each other in a deeper way, but we also feel more connected to previous generations.

Here are some of the fun ideas we’ve used to help draw us closer. Feel free to adapt them for your next family get-together.

~Genealogy Chart
 Cousin Jackie’s an expert genealogist who has unearthed fascinating stories about the family. She contributed a beautiful genealogy chart (above) showing ancestors from Thomas and Ethel Rawlins, the parents of the seven siblings mentioned above, all the way back to the 1700s. The chart is featured at every reunion.

~Family Trees
Some of us see each other only at reunions. We use Sister Patty’s family “Tree” to help us place people in the proper families and learn their names. Photos of Thomas and Ethel are at the base of the tree. Twigs on separate branches for each of their seven children feature pictures of the siblings’ children’s and grandchildren.

~Reunion Albums
Cousin Bill, a photographer, made a 2-by-3-foot blow-up of a photo from the first Rawlins  reunion. All the cousins, in their sixties and seventies now, were crowded together on the grass in a laughing group. Today’s children like to pick out their grandparents in the black-and-white photo.

(All three of the above ideas can be seen in the above photo.)

Today everyone has a digital camera, so we take lots of pictures. We keep an album chronicling each reunion. It’s fun to leaf through the pages, watching the changes as the children grow up and revisiting memories of loved ones no longer with us.

~T-shirts
At one reunion, someone brought several plain t-shirts and some fine-point permanent markers. We signed our names on each shirt, as decorative or simple as we wished. Later, names were drawn to choose the shirts’ lucky recipients. Another time, everyone wore matching t-shirts screen printed with “Rawlins Reunion” across a silhouette of a tree.

~Video recordings
Video recordings of previous reunions are fun to watch and become increasingly precious as the years pass. One of the most enjoyable featured Aunt Mary, one of the seven siblings, sharing memories of her North Dakota childhood and the early years of the family in Washington.

Everyone, young to old, has fun at the Rawlins Reunion

~Games
Different volunteers at each reunion supervise games for kids and grownups. Home-grown fun is best...like this wrap-the-mummy contest, using toilet paper and cooperative volunteers like Delaney.

~Picture Match
This year we had a contest to see who could match the most graduation photos with the present-day versions of the same people. Most kids were able to pick out their own parents and grandparents, and everyone had fun seeing how we’ve changed.

Listening to William's story

~Tell Me a Story
When our great-great-great grandfather Thomas Main Redfield, a blacksmith, was alive, he wrote long poems telling stories of his family and his travels. William Shaw, his many-times-removed great grandson, turned one of those poems about two children being rescued from a runaway horse and carriage into a dramatic reading. His sister Clarissa Austin expanded another family story about Grandmother Ethel and a prairie fire into a narrative that had us all wondering what would happen next.


~Interviews
Young family members were given a list of questions to use in interviewing older members. Then each interviewer introduced his or her partner and shared the fun and surprising facts they’d uncovered.

~Timelines

Eugene and Vicki look over the timeline

In a timeline game, Cousin Vickie handed out strips of paper: yellow for Grandfather Thomas’s side of the family, green for Grandmother Ethel’s, and blue for their descendants. Names and dates were printed on each strip. All those with a strip of paper gathered at the front where we could all see them, and at a signal, they hurried to arrange themselves by color and date. Then each person put his or her family member(s) in the proper place on a vertical timeline. By this time names were becoming familiar and the timeline helped us see the continuity of the generations.

~Sing-Alongs

Everyone knows "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"

We brought one of our most enjoyable family reunions to a close with an old-fashioned sing-along. We’d planned to use old-time favorites such as “Bicycle Built for Two” and “Cruisin’ Down the River on a Sunday Afternoon. We found that not even the oldsters knew all the words, so next time we’ll make song booklets so everybody can join in. Meanwhile, we improvised with a mixture of children’s tunes and campfire songs.

James Mason Rawlings: Loyalist or Traitor?

(This is Part 3 of a 3-part story. For the rest of the story, read the blogposts for Aug. 28 and 30.)

    With the discovery of their plot against the Revolution’s local leaders, the conspirators, including James Rawlings, fled. He must have kept in contact with his family, because about a month later a man named Abram Jones heard that “a certain James Rawlings was one of the heads amongst the Tories and that he was expected to pass by the settlement of Mattamuskeet, or to call there about the next day.”

  Lake Mattamuskeet is in Hyde County, on the coast of North Carolina. At that time, it was open to the sea, although now it is a self-contained lake. Jones kept watch for Rawlings. When he spied a small sail off in the sound, he took four men with him and set off after the boat. He found Rawlings and his family in the boat, heading out to sea where they hoped to meet up with an English vessel. One of the children, George, was only three or four years of age. Jones captured Rawlings and carried him before a magistrate, who took the deposition quoted earlier.

    In a follow-up letter from James Rawlings to the “Worshipful Justices of New Bern,” he gave more details about his co-conspirator Lewellen’s schemes. He also said, “Knowing the great influence Capt. Lewelling has over that neighborhood (I) have great reason to fear he will make attempts to invalidate my testimony.” Rawlings stated that he’d refused to kill anyone and “that I, being a poor man, have reason to fear his (Lewelling’s) power and influence over others to my hurt, as all the friends or power I have is to declare the Truth and Humbly Crave pardon for having had any hand in said plot or Scheme, testifying whatever shall come to my Memory I will make known about the matter.”

    Evidently he had reason to fear Lewelling’s influence. He was jailed...for a while. The next mention of him is a wanted notice from Craven County, North Carolina. It appeared October 24, 1777, in the Virginia Gazette, an early newspaper in Colonial Virginia, along with wanted notices for two other men.

The notice reads as follows:

 James Mason Rawlings for high treason, he is a noted villain, and one of the principals in the late conspiracy against the state, has lived for 2 years past in Martin County, and is a very famous in the art of Legerdemaen, about 40 years of age, of a very black complexion and had a cut on one of his cheeks, given under seal 9 Sep. 1777.

    A reward of ten pounds was offered for Rawlings, 5 pounds for each of the other two.

    The notice indicates that James Rawlings had escaped his confinement and that he was considered important enough to appear in a Virginia newspaper. At the time of the notice James had lived in Martin County for about two years, 1776 and 1777. He had a dark complexion and a scar (or maybe a wound?) on one of his cheeks. The word legerdemain means sleight-of-hand trickery of any sort. This implies that he was very clever and hard to catch.

Rawlins descendants learning about their history, August 2011

    One researcher discovered that between September 11, 1777 and November, 1777, Rawlings had signed up to sail from New Bern with Captain William Pile but did not report. Pile testified on November 22 that a Colonel White from Georgia had promised Rawlings a better situation and the last Pile had heard, Rawlings was “on the way to South Carolina in the company of Colonel White’s wagons.”

    Whatever happened, James Mason Rawlings dropped from sight. One branch of family tradition holds that he was recaptured and executed. Other family members believed he escaped to England, where he lived out his life.

    After James Mason Rawlings disappeared, Priscilla and their children remained on the North Carolina frontier. His brothers and his own family dropped the "g" from Rawlings, perhaps to avoid being associated with his disgrace. In 1782, Priscilla Rawlins and her daughter Nancy are shown on the membership role for Sandy Run Baptist Church in Rutherford County, North Carolina.   

    Records of the early Mormon Church show that their grandson James, an early Mormon convert, had a baptism-for-the-dead ceremony done for James Mason and Priscilla. Since this James was aware that his grandfather was dead, he must have had some knowledge of his death and therefore, the tradition of James Mason Rawlings deserting his family and never being heard from again doesn't seem to ring true.

    The family must have loved and had fond memories of their grandfather, since many of his descendants carried his name. One of his children, Charles, became our direct ancestor. His descendants followed the frontier westward, preaching, farming, blacksmithing, teaching, and helping to build America.

    More about some of them later!

James Mason Rawlins: Traitor or Not? Part 2

    (This is Part 2 of a 3-Part story. For the beginning of the story, read the blogpost for Aug. 28, 2011)

    Our first Rawlins ancestor in the New World, James Mason Rawlings, was a Loyalist who in 1777 found himself accused of high treason and conspiracy against the state of North Carolina. From the clues available in a few old documents, his arrest and imprisonment seems to have happened this way:

    According to a deposition he gave on August 10, 1777 after his arrest, Rawlings had attended a muster (or meeting) in March of 1777 at the courthouse in Plymouth, Martin County, North Carolina. Returning home in the company of two men, John Lewelling and John Carter, he was told “that the Country was Like to become subject to popery.” Lewelling hoped to forestall this outcome. Hoping for “a Blessing on the Indeavour,” he enlisted Rawlings to help gather a group of like-minded people about him. He asked Rawlings to draw up a written instrument, or constitution, to which people might agree under oath. (This request, taken with the fact that most other conspirators signed their testimonies with an X, tells us that Rawlings probably had more education than others involved in the plot.)

    According to his deposition, Rawlings at first refused to write out this Constitution, but Lewelling’s offer of payment persuaded him to do it.

    A number of people later testified concerning Rawlings’ part in the new society. One man, Peleg Belote, told of his conversation with a man named Absalom Legate. They had heard that the leaders of the rebellion designed to impose a new religion on the people which would compel them to worship images. Legate had persuaded Belote to go to hear a sermon by Rawlings. Legate introduced him to Rawlings and after swearing Belote to secrecy, Rawlings told him about a confederacy forming to support the religion they had been used to. Among other things, they pledged to oppose drafts and protect Loyalist draftees from being forced to serve in the patriot militia. They also discussed ways to help the British.

    Rawlings' deposition continued:

“Now after Many had come into this Society, as it was Term’d, they became known to each other by word and sign; . . .John Lewelling told (me) that if they could destroy Whitmel Hill, Colonel Williams, Thomas Hunter, Nathan Mayo, Colonel Salter and one Taylor, that then the Country would soon be settled In Behalf of the King. . .” 

    Whitmel Hill and the others were local leaders of the revolution. One researcher, Lola La Rae Sorenson, found that Whitmel Hill helped to uncover and stop the plot. He had married a woman named Winnefred Blount. Ms. Sorenson speculated,

“The fact that Whitmel Hill and James Rawlins were both living in Martin County, North Carolina and were both married to ladies named Blount and were both about the same age generation-wise really intrigued me. They would certainly have had to know each other, especially with Hill involved in bringing Rawlins to trial and stopping the plot to kill him and other patriot leaders."

    James' wife was Priscilla Blount. Could the two have been brothers-in-law? Ms. Sorenson wondered.

    Lewelling’s schemes built one upon the other. According to James Rawlings’ deposition, quoted here with the creative spelling and grammar of the time, Lewelling told him

“it would be a good scheeme to Git some Body to Diseffect the negroes and thought David Taylor would do it and Give out an oration of their Rising would draw the soldiers out of Halifax, whilst he and Company could seize the Governor and Magazene.”

   The Governor of Virginia, Richard Caswell, was expected at Halifax, a tiny town still known as "the birthplace of freedom" for being the location for the adoption of the Halifax Resolves. This was the first official action by a colony calling for independence.  Lewelling hoped not only to kill the governor and others, but to seize powder and arms stored at Halifax. When the governor didn’t come at the appointed time, it was

“Dropt for that time, but that scheeme became not public to Many, the Deponent believes, for when he objected against it John Lewelling said if he Divulg’d anything, Death was the portion to him or any one else.” 

     Another scheme was to go to General Howe, the general in charge of England’s troops in America, and offer him the support of the Society. Rawlings agreed to go with John Lewelling, as he hoped to see his father and friends. This mention of Rawlings’ father was a surprise. Did James plan to travel to England, or had his father also emigrated to America by this time? Whatever the truth, Rawlings and company went only as far as the town of Scotland Neck in Halifax County before turning back.

     In a few days the plot to kill the Revolutionary leaders was discovered. John Lewelling persuaded Rawlings to flee and not be taken by any means. Flee he did, but his freedom didn't last long. I'll tell the rest of the story next time.

James Mason Rawlings, Traitor or Not?

   


    Some of us have skeletons in our family closets. Some people are proud of famous ancestors. Our family has both skeletons and ancestors with claims to fame, but mainly our Rawlins predecessors were simply people living out their lives in the best way they knew how. They were swayed by political concerns, just as we are, and made decisions based on limited information, just as we do.

    Our first Rawlins ancestor in America, James Mason Rawlings, is a good example. Born about 1737, he emigrated from England prior to the Revolution. Records from the early 1770s show him in Pitt County, North Carolina, married to Priscilla Blount and with a number of children. His brothers, Roderick and Charles, had also come to America. Both of them supported the cause of independence from England. But James kept his loyalty to the mother country.

    He was a staunch supporter of the Church of England, which after the Revolutionary War was called the Episcopal Church. Some records refer to him as “Reverend,” and we know he preached at meetings.

    More than any other colony, North Carolina had a heavy concentration of Tories— political conservatives who remained loyal to England. The Crown had given land grants in North Carolina to many Scottish merchants. They and other merchants depended upon England for their trade. They feared losing their livelihood if the revolution should be successful. . .a not unreasonable fear since later, the property of many loyalists was confiscated. . . and thus they supported the king.

    Other Loyalists, like James Mason Rawlings, were clerics who supported the Church of England. Not only did the church require them to swear loyalty to their God, but also to their king. James and many others worried that if Catholic France entered the war on the American side, the new nation would soon be under the rule of the Pope.

     In 1777, Rawlings was accused of plotting to kill revolutionary leaders. A wanted notice in a North Carolina newspaper described him as “a noted villain.” Was he really? I’ll try to answer that question in the next posts.

Night Sky

   “The skies were really busy last night.”

   A friend’s chance remark last week sent us outside to look for ourselves. We really didn’t expect to see much, even though the night was clear, because we live on a hilltop overlooking the lights of town. Streetlights line the roadway in front of our house. So much light pollution washes across the evening sky that only the brightest stars shine through.

    Growing up years ago in a Cascade Mountain rain forest, hemmed in by tall trees and cloud cover, we didn’t often see the stars either. But on an occasional clear night, we’d go outside, tip our heads back and gaze in awe at the Milky Way’s glowing path of stardust winding through a billion distant suns. Only the dim gas lamp shining through the living room window competed with the brilliance above. We seldom saw a plane pass over in daytime and never at night. Man had not yet been to the moon or fired a rocket into space. One night our parents called us out to see falling stars. They called it a meteor shower. We stood for an hour, ooh-ing and aah-ing as bits of debris in a comet’s trail ignited in the earth’s atmosphere and streaked across the starry sky.

    Now we looked for a place where the glare of street and city lights would be dimmed. We found it in a corner of our back yard where house and garage walled us in on two sides, tall fences on the other two. Suddenly, the sky looked black, filled with more stars than we’d seen in years. Some stars blinked off and on as they traveled across the sky. They were aircraft lights, some on planes too far away to be heard or seen in daylight. Other far-away lights were satellites, their movement barely perceptible. The sky was busy.

     Then, to the north, we saw a steady, bright light, moving smoothly along an east-west trajectory. It was the International Space Station. In a few minutes it had passed out of sight, but it would complete its orbit around the earth and we’d see it again in another 90 minutes.

    It felt strange to know there were people up there, 250 miles above the earth, in that largest man-made object ever to be sent into space. Fifteen nations came together to design, build, and staff the space station, and crews will have lived and worked there continuously for eleven years, come November. We tried to imagine what the inhabitants were doing as the earth revolved beneath them. Might one of them have been looking down at the point of light that represented our community? Might he or she have been wondering who was looking up, wondering about them?

    The night sky has always caused humankind to think deep thoughts. But now, if one can find a place dark enough to see it, there’s even more to think about.

An American Story Begins

   Along with most families in America, ours can tell stories of journeys, bits and pieces of history that help us understand how we got where we are today. We share  our own New-World beginnings with many people who trace their ancestries back to the courageous settlers who came to America on the Mayflower.

    When Priscilla Mullins boarded the Mayflower in 1620, she was 17 years old. It was already September, and for two months the passengers endured stale air and discomfort in makeshift quarters between decks as the ship tossed in stormy seas. In one storm, a main beam cracked and the ship began to leak, but the beam was repaired with an iron spike brought from the Netherlands. They pounded caulking into the cracks. When the ship was blown off course, it landed on the rocky shores of Massachusetts, far from their intended destination in Virginia. Priscilla’s parents and brother died during that first terrible winter in the New World, leaving her the only survivor of her family in America.

    Captain Miles Standish, the newly widowed military advisor of the colony, wished to marry her. He sent his friend John Alden to plead his cause. John, not one of the fifty members of the Pilgrim band, was a ship-carpenter by trade. He'd been hired as a cooper, or barrel maker, for the Mayflower, which usually docked at Southhampton, England. Either because of a desire for adventure, or because he already had his eye on Priscilla, he came along on the voyage and became one of the founders of the colony and the seventh signer of the Mayflower Compact. According to a famous poem by descendant Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, when he tendered Captain Standish’s proposal of marriage to Priscilla, she replied, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?”

    So he spoke for himself, Priscilla said yes, and they became the parents of ten children who survived to adulthood. Of all the pilgrim families, they have the most descendants.

    Our branch of the Rawlins family traces its ancestry to John and Priscilla Alden through their second child. Elizabeth, born in Plymouth in 1625, was the first white girl born in New England.


    Elizabeth was described by someone who knew her as “dignified, a woman of great character and fine presence, very tall and handsome.” In 1644, she married William Pabodie in Duxbury, Massachusetts, and became the mother of thirteen living children. William, who held the office of town clerk after fire had destroyed the town's records, carefully recorded his own marriage and the births and marriages of his children.

    Later, around 1684, William bought property that would become part of Little Compton, Rhode Island. He and Elizabeth and several of their children and grandchildren moved there. Both he and Elizabeth died in little Compton, Elizabeth at the ripe age of 94. At the time of her death she had 82 grandchildren and 556 great-grandchildren.

I can’t help but wonder how she remembered all those names!

Reunion Raspberry Brownies

    We’ve waited a long time for summer to arrive this year, but perhaps it’s the late arrival that makes these August days so extraordinarily delightful. We're surfeited with colors and smells; our windows and doors stand open to let summer blow through. Bees buzz in the flower beds, hummingbirds hover in the twinberry bushes. The 4 x 8’ box garden is overflowing with good things to eat: lettuce, basil, peas, Swiss chard, parsley. The green beans and carrots are nearly ready. Our berry patch has finished producing but local stands offer big, juicy berries of many kinds and grocery stores tempt us with peaches, nectarines, cherries and other delectables from Eastern Washington.

Our "garden."

    What a bounty of flavor, color, and taste! Today we ate blueberries and sliced bananas with our morning cereal, salad from our garden and cherries at lunch, steamed Swiss chard and corn on the cob with local salmon for dinner. For desert we sampled some of the bar cookies I made for the family reunion coming up next weekend. Rhubarb bars using our own rhubarb are a tart-sweet treat. But the bars that really made a hit with Hank are my own invention, as far as I know.

    For anyone who loves the combination of chocolate and raspberries, here are the directions for Reunion Raspberry Brownies:

Raspberry Brownies

Ingredients:

family size box of fudgey brownie mix
fresh raspberries, 2-3 cups
sugar, ¼ to ½ cup or to taste
2 Tbsp. cornstarch dissolved in ¼ cup cold water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 9 x 13" pan or spray with cooking oil. Mix brownies according to package directions and spread in pan.

Mash berries and sugar together and bring to a boil over medium heat. Cook a few minutes. Stir in enough of the cornstarch-water mixture to thicken to consistency of jam. Cook just until juice looks transparent, then remove from heat.

Using about a cup of the raspberry sauce, dribble it from a large spoon in vertical lines two inches apart across the batter in the pan. Then, use a spatula or knife to cut through batter and sauce going the opposite direction, in lines about two inches apart. (You can do this both vertically and horizontally to make a better mixing of sauce and batter.)

Bake as directed on package. Let cool before cutting.

Raspberry jam would work too, but we really like the flavor of the fresh berries, and the sauce is less sweet than jam would be.