year's meeting were read, and Jerry mentioned the passing of several Ellingwood
relatives since last year. Prizes were given out for the oldest attendee (a young lady in
her 90's) the youngest attendee (a baby girl less than a year old) and the attendee from
the furthest away(which was my Aunt Dot from Ohio this year.) Attendance at this
year's reunion was 44 people. Somewhere in the middle of this I gave a brief talk
to introduce myself and those with me, the first descendants of Clara Ellingwood to
come to the reunion since Grand Uncle Clarence had some years before. I can't
remember much of what I said about my genealogy research so I hope I didn't
babble for too long!
Just before the meeting adjourned Jerry mentioned that he'd been corresponding with
a descendant of one of Asa F. Ellingwood's siblings and it turned out the young man
was there. Plans were discussed about perhaps merging the two lines' reunions into
one shared event.
Then we all went outside for group pictures, first of those descended from each of Asa
and Florilla's children and then of the family as a whole. I was asked to take the pictures
of some of the other families and I hope those pictures came out ok!
Shortly afterwards we had to leave because we were heading home on Sunday and we
wanted to visit the Ellingwood gravesites at Wayside Cemetery in West Paris on Saturday
afternoon. All in all, we had a good time at the Ellingwood Family Reunion and I think
Jerry, Bonnie, Al, Lori, and the others did a tremendous job!
We found the Wayside Cemetery without much trouble. It was finding the graves of Asa
and Florilla Ellingwood that was the challenge. While the others scrambled up a hilly
section I walked further down the road to another entrance and started in there. At about
the time that the others found the Ellingwood headstones, I found those of what I thought
were Florilla's parents James T. Dunham and Sally Houghton Dunham. I took some
pictures and then joined the others to take shots of the Ellingwoods.
Then it was back to the cars. There was one more stop at another graveyard in an
unsuccessful search for two other relatives, after which we drove back to Gorham
for dinner and then on to the motel. We talked for awhile with Dot and Diana and
I heard a few new family stories Then we said our goodnights and went to our rooms.
I got out my genealogy binders and was able to confirm that it was indeed the graves
of our Dunham 3x great grandparents I'd found, and then I checked my camera to
make sure all the pictures were still there.(A wee bit of paranoia there.)
To be continued...
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