This will be the last of the letters to home from Francis S. Wolfe, a distant relative of mine. He writes of his many battles and scrimmages, the Battle of Gettysburg among the most compelling. After his battery was knocked out in the immediacy of the assault on Little Round Top, they retreated to regroup spiking the cannons as they left.
There is one museum, one natural wonder and one historical site that after visiting have all left me breathless and without words.
As Ohio pioneers my ancestors, George and Jane Pisor Wolfe, fresh out of Indiana County Pennsylvania and eager to homestead on their 100 acres in Athens County, had much to do. They cleared land, built a log cabin, planted and harvested a corn crop, had children, built a church and a schoolhouse and established a community. They also had to fight for their country and they did so willingly.
We are as a country heading for hardships, we are told, and perhaps now is a good time for a tonic from the past to remind ourselves of the hearty stock from which we emerged. The Wolfe Family History published in 1964 includes inspiring tales of early pioneers into southeast Ohio and beyond to Indiana and Wisconsin.
To continue on the theme of family reunions, let me write a bit about recollections of my father’s side, the Wolfe family reunion.
Summer is full of family reunions and my husband’s family has met on the first or second Sunday of August for 92 years. One senior member at 92 was present at the first reunion! My husband’s family is not exceptional and for that reason represents what underpins the status quo of a great and good society. What matters as well is that one can watch this sturdiness work itself out in reunions.
Kelly Van Gundy and two of her four children just got back from South Carolina where they had gone to “help out” a sister Baptist congregation and their community.
There is something unseemly about seeing two peahens perched on top of my chicken coop. The chickens inside think so, too. They hoot and holler taking offense at such an untoward intrusion among birds of a feather. They have, however, grown less interested and even bolder over the last six weeks as the peahens become more of a feature.