Middlebury Center,
Tioga Co., Pa.,
April 10, 1925.
Dear Cousins:
Will try and write a few lines. I am very sorry that I am late, but certainly can't be helped. I never felt my age and my infirmities until the last few years, but I can plainly see that I am getting well along in years. We may be on the down hill side of life, but when we get together for a little visit things have to hum just the same.
I think the best Cousins Dinner we ever had was last fall. Twenty-three of us met here at our old humble dwelling and such a meal you never sat down to in all your life! After we had consumed a good supply of the good things we merely shoved the table back and in a friendly circle told a few jokes and got a good account of the Cousins Dinner at Stroudsburg1. We visited until the clock struck four. Then came the good-byes and the resolution to meet again in October this year.
n not so many years we, the older generation of the Campbell cousins, will be memories and a younger generation must become the older generation. Truly this is a "world without end" and surely it shall be populated with "Campbells without end".
With love to all,
1. 1924 was the only time two Cousins dinners were held. prior to that there had been one held our of the Nelson area, one had been held in Sugar Hill, Schuyler Co., NY. In the Vol. 2 CCC letters, everyone who mentions the Cousins Dinner to be held in the fall refers to to its location as Charlie Congdon's summer home in Marshalls Falls, PA, which is near Stroudsburg. Everyone but Laura. In her 1924 letter, she treats the location as still being undecided and proposes it be held on her farm. So, for whatever reason(s) the official one was held at Charlie's. And she held an alternate, or competing one. Hers had the larger attendance.
Utilizing Sandy Buck Garrett's 2013 transcription.
Copyright © 2013 William B. Thompson. Commercial use prohibited.