Thursday, August 20, 2009

Reunion

We recently attended a "family reunion" for the Tobey side of Raph's family which would be his paternal grandmother's side of the family. They are the family members who have inhabited Kittery Maine (our town) since 1640's, but because Raph's grandmother died fairly young and was one of 10 children we don't actually know many of the local relatives, which turns out to be half the town. In fact we showed up to the reunion and the first people we saw were people I knew from Music Together! So pretty much the rule is that Makili and Remick aren't allowed to date anyone until they move away from Maine!

Meeting the people was really cool, but even cooler to me was the location. The reunion was held at an old barn a few miles from our house. It is owned by a woman who was a friend and then a caretaker for Raymond Pritchard, the last of a family of farmers who owned the land. Makili's great great great grandfather, Skylar Tobey, worked on the farm and eventually became a caretaker himself. He lived in a small shack on the land, which the owner cleaned out. She left it almost exactly as she thinks it was left when he died, complete with the petrified milk and jam (still good) on the table. His old books are in there and tools and various other things. It was super cool. And then she has also cleaned out the huge barn which belonged to the Pritchard family. There are before pictures which show what a complete dump the place used to be, but you'd never guess that now. It was so cool. Full of interesting antiques that she had found inside and with a great sense of history just swallowing you up. I loved it. Here are a few pictures of a few of the people, and a few of the things inside...