We did it! We called this the 142nd annual Collett-McKay picnic on Aug. 11. Those persons who keep these articles will thus not have an article for a 141st picnic; anyway, after all these years, we now appear to have the correct count for the picnic that started in 1866.

     After welcoming his cousins, McKay Collett jumped from his Collett table to get a special treat. The Inwood twins brought a huge "organic Irish salmon" (a farm raised specie of salmon) from Findley Market in Cincinnati, one of many gustatorial delights plunged into the maws of 210 Colletts and McKays from 16 states.

     Rachel Denny, aged 4 months, daughter of David and Martha Denny of Springboro, was the youngest of 18 picnic first-timers. At 104, Esther Doster was again the oldest, and Helen Louise Schneider recorded her 88th picnic attendance. Joel McKay and Nicholas Kelly were recognized for now serving in the army. Jana Rother, from Hemes, Germany, came the furthest distance. Clint Hackney, though he lives only one-half mile south on Inwood Road, came to his first picnic in 32 years.
     Doug and Janet Reynolds celebrated their 51st wedding anniversary, after being married at Jonah's Run Baptist Church immediately following the 1956 picnic. Her father, Charles Doster, was born on picnic day in 1900, the only picnic her grandmother missed between 1866 and 1945.
     McKay Collett recognized Wilbur McKay's death since the last picnic, and pointed to the new tree planted in his memory. Picnic site purchased in 1805.
     Steve Collett indicated the trustees would gladly accept more financial bequests. Later, Steve and others considered ways to acquire additional acreage adjacent to the four acre picnic site, bought in 1805 as part of their first 1,000-acre Ohio purchase by our northern Virginia Quaker ancestors, Moses and Abigail Shinn McKay, from the first Northwest Territory surveyor, and, later, War of 1812 general, Nathaniel Massie.
     About 1816, when Moses and Abigail moved to one mile north of now Harveysburg on the west side of Caesar Creek, they left a Haines neighbor near Cedarville, Va., but soon acquired another Haines neighbor, their daughter, Rachel, who had married Nathan Haines in 1813 in Virginia and was already living just across Caesar Creek.

     Genealogy researchers also reported Joshua Haines, Daniel Collett's future father-in-law, purchased 1,180 acres on Bullskin Creek, just southwest of Charlestown, W.Va., then in northern Virginia, in 1752 with a young surveyor, George Washington. Collett, newly removed with his parents from near Baltimore, was, like Washington, an Anglican. He served the colonies in the Revolution, though as a private. Our Collett ancestor, who learned to read and write as an adult, was sheriff of Jefferson County, Va., and neighbor of Noah Haines on Bullskin Creek, when he purchased 2,358 Ohio acres, mostly in Chester Township, just east of the Bullskin Trail, Ohio's first 1807 north-south state road, and just south of now Jonah's Run Church, in 1814. He was president of the Clinton County Bible Society in 1825 and his heirs were the charter members of the church founded in 1838, three years after he died and was buried at Caesar Creek Quaker Meeting cemetery where his daughter-in-law, Rebecca Haines Collett, and his wife, Mary Haines Collett had moved their memberships from Hopewell Quaker Meeting in northern Virginia in 1805 and 1812. No longer Quakers, two of Daniel Collett's grandsons, one a Collett and the other a McKay, both Civil War casualties, are buried at Jonah's Run.

     Those attending from out-ofstate were, from Arizona, Annette Hanson Chesvick and Diane H. Hanson; from Colorado, Rachel Pidgeon and Steve Baugh; from Florida, Jennifer and Lonnie Lawson, Earl and Dorothy Koehler Holtgrefe, Barbara Doster Deppner, Nancy Collett DalPlain, Saundra L. Ames, Marjorie S. Ames and Elizabeth Hahn; from Georgia, Charles Doster, Joseph Deppner and wife, Imelda, and daughter, Ileana; from Iowa, Patricia Talmage Giesting and Jim Giesting and Marilyn Talmage; from Illinois, Robin Fabian, Karla and Allen Inwood; from Michigan, Dave and Cynthia Doster, and sons Drew and Adam Doster; from Minnesota, Karen and David Conradi-Jones; from Montana, Jennifer and Paul Dunn and John P., Anna, Rebekah, Sarah, Ashley and Aaron Dunn; from Nevada; Pamela Hanson Robles and sons Evan and Christian Hanson Robles, Brent Bogan and Eric Bogan; from Pennsylvania, James and Susan Holtgrefe and children Gretchen, Walter, Heidi and Marcie; from South Dakota, Gary L., William and Kathy Conradi; from Virginia, Michael McKay; from Vermont, Kimberly A. Becker Price and Delwyn L. Price with children Zoe, Emma E. and Seth Howard Price; and from Wisconsin, Guy Lee Fields and Ellen Magee. (Where it reads 'from Vermont' it should say 'from Utah')
     To read articles for previous picnics, log on to www.RobertMacKayClan.com. Email additional picnic articles to Mike@RobertMackayClan.com.