Naylor/Hagen Family Reunion

At my grandmother's memorial service we met cousins of my mother's, on her father's side that I'd never known about. They were really nice and it was exciting to learn that there was a whole group of relatives that were out there. After the service we learned that the brother of the cousin we met was organizing a family reunion. I didn't really know what to expect and sort of waffled about whether or not to go, but in the end, the prospect of meeting people who could bring pieces of my family tree to life outweighed my nervousness of meeting strangers.
The reunion took place in Ohio, in the towns of Adena (where my grandfather was born and grew up) and St. Clairsville the nearest town with motels.

My mother's cousin Drew did lots of work organizing the reunion and working with the relatives still in and around Adena he arranged a tour of Adena including the houses lived in by the Naylor and Hagen families. The first night we got in late and didn't get to see the first showing of the PowerPoint presentation of the Mclaughlin, Hagan, Anderson, Naylor and Hanna families but we did join the caravan early in the morning for the start of the tour. The first stop on the tour was the old school house where my great aunts and uncles went to school and then later taught. 

After that we walked to the house that my grandfather was actually born in and is the house pictured in the only snapshot of my grandfather as a child with his family. 

The house is currently being lived in by Naylor relatives which was really nice because it meant we could take a complete tour of the inside of the house too. After the Naylor house we took a little detour to get an early peek at the house where my grandfather's mother grew up and where my grandfather and his siblings went to live after his mother died. 

The next scheduled part of the reunion was a trip to the cemetery where my great-grandparents are buried, an also my grandfather's twin baby brothers that died of measles at less than a year old. 

We took advantage of the gorgeous day to take a bunch of group shots and that was great thinking on someone's part because now we have lots of great pictures of everyone organized into groups that will help us remember how everyone is related.

Four of the six children of Fred Naylor.  

The Naylor men.

The Naylor women.

First cousins. 

Second cousins.

The hill behind the Hagen house where the Naylor children recited poetry for their mother.

The Hagen house from the backyard. 
After the tour we took a break and went our separate ways for dinner.  Then we met up again in the common room provided by the Day's Inn and each of us introduced ourselves to the whole group including our background, how we were related and what we though about the reunion.
Overall it was a great experience and I'm really glad that we went to the reunion, got to see a glimpse of the past and also got to meet all these really cool people that I'm related to.  I hope that everyone else had a good time too and that we'll see each other more from now on.