(Howard was late getting this one out which is why the "2009" date.)

     "Cousins by the Dozens", that phrase describes this writer and many others who live in or near Chester Township, just northwest of Wilmington. A total of 175 persons signed the register at the 143rd annual Collett-McKay Picnic on August 12, 2008. It's always the second Saturday in August, and you can find the four-acre family-owned site on August 8, 2009, at 5151 Gurneyville Road. Several cousins still live on the surrounding farms, part of the original 1,000 acres purchased by a northern Virginia Quaker, Moses McKay, in 1805 from Nathaniel Massey, a surveyor of the Virginia Military Land Grants. Two persons from Colorado found the 08 picnic after reading about it on the McKay Clan website.
     "Some people come to the Picnic, and some don't. We do", Esther Underwood Doster often said. She first attended the year before she and Dad married, and missed only once the rest of her 105-year life, which ended peacefully on October 23, 2008. She dressed, had breakfast, and told her friend, "I'm ready to die." Thirty seconds later, she died. Mom and Dad also said, "We'll go to Kingman High School and Wilmington College Alumni if we get the corn planted and the hay put up." They always went. Mom had perfect attendance at both.
     Kathryn Luby's McKay genealogy boards were again studied by many as parents showed their kids how they were related to one of the four McKay kids who married four Collett's in the 1820's. Kathryn continues to ask for new names to add to the boards. The youngest added at the 08 picnic was Hayden Jade Lawson, grand-daughter of John and Sherry Mothersole, who live on the farm across the road from the picnic site.
     Haines families lived next to both Moses and Abigail Shinn McKay at Cedarville, Virginia, and Daniel and Mary Haines Collett, who were twenty miles NE, near Charlestown, Virginia. The first Ohio Haines picnic was held sixteen years before the first Collett-McKay Picnic, in 1850, at Caesar Creek Friends Meeting House, where McKay's first attended in Ohio, and where Collett's are buried, two miles west of the Collett-McKay Picnic site.
     Out-of state persons attending included the following: China, Roger Magee, Shanghai; Colorado, Mary and Raymond Sell, Boulder; Florida, Debby Andrew Worthing and Rhea Worthing, Tampa, Nancy Collett Del Pian, Port Charlotte; Georgia, David and Paul Jackson, Marietta; Illinois, Chad, Karen, and Charles Fabian, Des Plaines; Robin Fabian, Woodstock; Katie and Bart Fabianowcz, Buffalo Grove; Allen, Carla, and Jason Inwood, Lebanon; Fred Maker, Bartlett; Iowa, Jim and Tricia Talmage Giesting, Glenwood; Kentucky, Kay and David Sell, Richmond; Michigan, Cindi, David, and Adam Doster, Novi; Montana, Jeweliann Billingsley, Shepherd; New York, Bernice and Brian Magee, Dryden; Nevada, Una Taylor Williams, Reno; North Carolina, Will Sloan; Tennessee, Brian Jacobson, Oak Ridge, and Marilyn Talmage, Nashville; Wisconsin, Ellen Magee, Madison; Virginia, Michael McKay, Winchester.