(Submitted by D. Howard Doster to Webmaster and Newspaper at the same time.)

     Cousins from nearby Inwood and Buck Run Roads, some still living on McKay land, could have walked to the Gurneyville Road picnic on the second Saturday in August. Perhaps because of fuel costs, however, attendance was down. Only 191 persons from 12 states made the picnic ten-year photo taken by Travis and Anne Doster Glaze. Refer to Michael McKay's www.robertmackayclan.com website for the picture, including everyone's name this time.
     Most persons adjusted quickly to having another vacant spot where a maple tree died. The Inwood table was again set in a different place, and Colletts mostly sat in the shade way to the SE of their former spot. Overall, the well-mown shaded pasture site was again beautiful to behold.
     At 103, Esther Doster was again the oldest attendee. She especially missed seeing recently deceased Wallace Collett and Howard Shambaugh, as well as Wilbur McKay, now recovering from a stroke. At 7 weeks, Marilyn Hatfield of Monroe, the daughter of Jessica Mothersole and granddaughter of John Mothersole, was the youngest first-time attendee.
     Cousin Kathryn Luby did it! She committed to creating a large genealogy board, really multiple boards, with perhaps a thousand names of the 12 tribes of Abigail and Moses McKay, including the descendants of their four kids who married Colletts in the 1820's, and she did it! Because some McKay children stayed in Virginia, first cousins fought on both sides of the Civil War, partly because several battles occurred on McKay land there. The 1734 Robert McKay house wasn't destroyed, and is still intact, because it was a Civil War hospital. The Robert McKay house and the site of the nearby Moses McKay house were sold this year to the town of Front Royal, VA, which wanted the large supply of spring water. Kathryn is still accepting additional names to keep the McKay genealogy current. Who will now update Howard Collett's 1930 blueprint of the Collett genealogy? Jo Ellen Greenlee let me copy her vast scrapbook collection of Collett memories. I hope I get to copy more scrapbooks next year.
     How many sugar camps can you name near the picnic grounds? What a question? Some of us learned that Lila? Inwood and Wallace Edwards had their first date at a chicken roast at Amos DeHaven's sugar camp near the corner of Buck Run and SR 380. Someone remembered them singing, "Ain't Miss Behavin." Helen Louise Stanfield Schneider, now 88, said, "We had the most parties," at their Harry Nickerson camp on Inwood Rd. Other nearby camps included Bernie McKay on Inwood Rd., Weldon McKay on Buck Run/Gurneyville Rd., Jim McIntyre on New Burlington/Stingley, Francis McKay-Maxine Hamilton on New Burlington/Eleazer Rd., Lee Ames on Center/SR 380, Cliff Hormell and also Will Sayers on Hormell Rd. McKay Collett remembers hearing the Collett "hole-in-the-woods" camp yielded 100 gallons in 1910. I still have the buckets from our Doster Rd. camp. The Shawnee made maple sugar down New Burlington Rd from our present Moses McKay house.
     Out of state attendees included Jo Ellen and Gene Greenlee, Colorado Springs, and Ginny, Mary and Raymond Sell, Boulder, CO; Tonya and Jerad Davis, McGuire AFB, NJ; Mestmi Guy Lee Fields, and Ellen Magee, Madison, WI; Max Magee, League City, TX; Michael McKay, Winchester, VA; David, Sally and Alison Sell, Richmond. KY; Carol Collett and Sue Grubman, Redondo Beach, CA; Patricia Giesting and Marilyn Talmadge, Glenwood, IA; Kristin and Darren Morin, Long Sault, Ontario; Nancy Collett Dal Pian, Port Charlotte, FL; Allen, Karla and Jason Inwood, Jr, Lebanon, plus Charles, Chas, Karen and Robin Fabian, Des Plaines, and Fred Maker, Schaumburg, IL;

(Submitted by D. Howard Doster to Webmaster and Newspaper at the same time.)

     The 140th annual Collett-McKay Picnic is Saturday, August 12 at 5353 Gurneyville Road, NW of Wilmington, at the four-acre family site. Again this 10th year, we'll take a family picture after our carry-in lunch. Bring your family and meet your cousins.
     Also, bring your stories. We need some new ones. Our most illustrious storyteller, Howard Shambaugh, died last winter, as did Wallace Collett. Howard called this the "Big-Nose" picnic in his weekly journal we now miss. I enjoyed hearing him tell how Dad and his 1916 Kingman team mates played three basketball games at the college in one day to win the first Clinton County tourney. Mom told me she and Howard were undefeated Kingman debaters in 1920-21. Last year, Howard recited Mom's negative "League of Nations" speech. We missed him at Mom's 103rd birthday in March.
     Wallace was an active Wilmington College Trustee. As Chairman of the American Friends Service Committee, Wallace went into China the year before President Nixon. Wallace's father, Howard, and perhaps others, had this story about how three Huguenot Collett brothers came from France; one went to South Africa; one, to England; and one, to America. The story is now written on the picnic gatepost, and some family members added an "e" to their last name to make it sound more French, perhaps.
     In an Ashby Genealogy I got from Helen Feike, I learned a different Collett origin. This one states that a John Collett, an educated London merchant and a Fellow at Claire College, Cambridge, England, came to near Baltimore in 1650. His ancestors lived in Little Giddings, and later, in London, England. One, a Henry, was Lord Mayor of London in 1486 and again in 1495. His eldest son, a John Colet, 1467-1519, was a noted Oxford Reformer who was a pioneer for the Renaissance in England. This John studied Plato, lectured on St Paul at Oxford, became Dean of St Paul's in London and, after inheriting his father's wealth, founded St Paul's School for Boys.
     A great hero of the Reformation, John boldly preached the scripture publicly in English, despite the Church's "Latin Only" policies. Within six months, 20,000 persons packed into St Paul's Cathedral and at least that many more were reported to be outside trying to get in. He served as Chaplin to King Henry VIII, and preached at Wolsey's installation as Cardinal. Like most Reformers, Colet did not want a formal breach with the Roman Catholic Church, but he disapproved of the priestly confession and of the celibacy of the clergy. According to an Internet site, he was a powerful force in England, helped materially to overcome medieval conditions, and to introduce the humanist movement. Amazingly, he managed to avoid being beheaded, as were some of his peers.
     Was our ancestor one of this John's many younger brothers? When I asked Wallace about these English Colletts, he said, "I have been to Little Giddings twice. I think they are our ancestors. My father, Howard, liked to'". Wallace didn't finish the sentence then and I never got him to finish it though I tried multiple times over the last five years.
     Maybe some of you will pick up the trail, and add to the story about Collett origins. Oh, although the 1734 Robert McCoy (McKay) home, the oldest house in the Shenandoah Valley, near Cedarville, VA, was open for visitors on June 25, we really don't know much about the McCoy line before then. See you at the Picnic?!
     Particularly if you've not seen the original Ohio Collett-McKay houses, we'll help you find them. At 9363 New Burlington Road, Waynesville, we now live in the 1818 Moses McKay home where his four kids lived in the 1820's when they married two of Moses Collett's children from just up the road, and two of Moses Collett's siblings from the Daniel and Mary Haines Collett's home, now owned by Wallace's heirs, southeast seven miles, near Jonah's Run Church on SR 73, near the Warren-Clinton County line. The Daniel Collett house is up the lane from the "Hole-in-the-Woods" Jonathan and Sarah McKay Collett home, now owned by McKay and Dianne Collett. The original Moses McKay log cabin site, which is also where my Dad was born, is now under Lake Caesar, but the original Collett log cabin is now nearby at Caesar Creek Pioneer Village, as is the Caesar Creek Quaker Meeting House, where both Collett and McKay women joined when they moved their membership from Hopewell Meeting in northern Virginia. For more directions, or to share stories, call me at 765 412 1495, or email at bhdoster@earthlink.net