CURIOUS FAMILY HISTORY.--At a reunion of two families name Collett and McKay, near Waynesville, Ohio, last Saturday, nearly one hundred and eighty-five bearing those names were present. Of the Collett family, it is related that, more than a hundred years ago, a husband, wife, and babe set sail from the coast of France, to find a home in America. The wife, after a few days at sea died, had a famine having broken out on board ship, an allowance of one biscuit each day was issued to the adults, The children being permitted to starve. But the father shared his food with the child, and fed it upon half a biscuit a day until the voyage ended. and from a motherless babe, subsisted on half a biscuit a day through a long voyage, it is said, The Collett family is descended.

     CURIOUS FAMILY HISTORY.--At a reunion of two families name Collett and McKay, near Waynesville, Ohio, last Saturday, nearly one hundred and eighty-five bearing those names were present. Of the Collett family, it is related that, more than a hundred years ago, a husband, wife, and babe set sail from the coast of France, to find a home in America. The wife, after a few days at sea died, had a famine having broken out on board ship, an allowance of one biscuit each day was issued to the adults, The children being permitted to starve. But the father shared his food with the child, and fed it upon half a biscuit a day until the voyage ended. and from a motherless babe, subsisted on half a biscuit a day through a long voyage, it is said, The Collett family is descended.

     CURIOUS FAMILY HISTORY.--At a reunion of two families name Collett and McKay, near Waynesville, Ohio, last Saturday, nearly one hundred and eighty-five bearing those names were present. Of the Collett family, it is related that, more than a hundred years ago, a husband, wife, and babe set sail from the coast of France, to find a home in America. The wife, after a few days at sea died, had a famine having broken out on board ship, an allowance of one biscuit each day was issued to the adults, The children being permitted to starve. But the father shared his food with the child, and fed it upon half a biscuit a day until the voyage ended. and from a motherless babe, subsisted on half a biscuit a day through a long voyage, it is said, The Collett family is descended.

(This was also on the same page of the scrapbook that the article about the 1872 picnic was on which is what the italicized comment is referring to. It is a brief comment on the picnic of 1869. One interesting note is the date of this article which is the first Saturday rather than the second Saturday which became the established date for the Collett-McKay Picnic.)

Family Jubilee.

To the Editors of the Republican:
     A notable event, differing from ordinary public assemblages, occurred on the 7th inst. at Pisgah Heights, distaut ten miles from Harveysburg. where the entire kin and kith of two celebrated families of Ohio, to-wit:--Collett and McKay--joined in the pleasantest manner possible, to entertain one another agreeably to their own notions of social enjoyment and propriety.
     Why there have not been more of these social family reunions, after the toil of the harvest is over, is one of those nice questions too subtle for analysis. An hour thus spent in perfect peace of mind, and in easy, rollicking conversation, flowing in fluent sympathy with all the aims, hopes, surprises and pleasures of life, away from the vulgar eye of the world, is worth a great deal in forming just opinions of the worth of social intercourse.
     The manhood of the Collett and McKay families is to be measured only by the expressive word big. Any other adjective would but poorly convey an adequate idea of the size of the men. Seven generations of sturdy farmers have gone before, and for them to lean upon: and there is no taint of feminine weakness observable in their composition. Independence, courage, administrative talent, tact, and a likely taste for books, are the solid characteristics that distinguish them as a community of people.
     More than two hundred years ago, husband, wife and babe, set sail from the coast of France to find a home in America. The wife, after a few days passage out, died; and a famine having broken out on ship board, an allowance of one biscuit each day was issued to the adults on board; the children were doomed to starve. On this scant pittance, the father and child survived the wreck, and after a long voyage, reached their destination.
     From the motherless babe, subsisted on a half biscuit, and cradled in the arms of the sea, in the providence of Heaven, the hardy, loyal race of Collett's sprang. The son's and daughters are worthy to be the descendants of such a grand sire, as he, who, in the midst of death, famine and storm, saved to the uttermost, the vine which has nourished a thousand branches.
     There were present on the ground, forty-one clusters from the original tree, numbering in all, one hundred and eighty-five souls, all bearing the name of either Collett or McKay. Besides these, there were, also present, those who descended directly from the parent stock; but who, in consequence of marriage alliances, have dropped one or the other of the pair of names, amongst whom were Mrs. Samuel Denny, of Harveysburg, Mrs. Noah Haines, of Harveysburg, and Mrs. Catharine Allen, of Waynesville, and others, whose names I did not learn.
     The real estate owned by these two families alluded to above, amounts, in the aggregate, to three-quarters of a million of dollars, and comprises six thousand acres of cultivated lands.
     I undertook to count the actual number of babies present, but owing to the omnipresent ruffles and cloaks of similar style, color and fabric, and the ubiquity of movement by which they were transported from one pair of arms to another, occasioned me so much fatal reckoning as to cause an abandonment of the enterprise.
     We, four of us, took our departure just as the eclipse grew thickest, the dusty roads flying under our horses' feet with the music of the stones and the spheres under us, and the winds whipping our coat tails into very whip-crackers; but, ballasted with plenty of cake in the bottom of the vehicle, I rode home to find that I did not own the pretty word big in my possessions.

J. B. C.     

     Harveysburg, Aug. 7, 1869.

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