A special treat this year was the presence of James M. Peters of Ohio who wrote the enormous and valuable book "The Peters Family of Scott County", and it's subsequent revisions. His wife, Ann, accompanied him. In the picture above James's book is lying on the pile on the left, and on the right is Zella Peters Collins, the founder and driving force of the Peters' reunion for many years.
The lovely lady on the right above is Lucille Collins Peters, and I'm sorry, but I didn't get the name of her friend. I know they worked together somewhere and had fond memories of it, but that's as much as I got. Lucille, age 90, is the widow of Earl Peters, the son of Lucian Peters. She is also Zella Collins's sister-in-law, as she is a sister to Zella's husband, Hugh. Isn't genealogy fun??!!
And here's a nice shot of a few folks we know....Barbara is on the left, Aunt Doretta Peters on the right, and in between are James Peters, Zella Colllins, and James's wife, Ann.
As part of the day's events, we had arranged with Roy Peters to have the gate unlocked at the bottom of Peters' Hollow, so that we might take vehicles up to the old John M. Peters house. Only five of us made the trip in Tom's trusty Jeep, but it was a meaningful excursion. The house is shown above when John Peters lived there with his family. His first wife - and Zella's mother - was Sallie Smith, and she is buried in the hollow. His second wife, and Roy's mother, was Addie Pierson.
Here Zella is pictured with her father. I'm sorry, I'm not sure where this one was taken, and I'll make a note to ask Zella, but I expect it was taken in the vicinity of the family home.
This is the house as it looks today. Roy has replaced some windows to keep out the worst of the weather and delay further decay, but otherwise the house is much as it was when the family left it.
Fortunately, we went inside before we took a good luck at the foundation. As it was, the house seemed remarkably sturdy, even with five of us inside, and we noticed no real soft spots in the floor, as is so often the case with these old houses.
Here is a shot of one of the two rooms upstairs where I expect the children slept. John fathered a total of thirteen children and I'm sure they cuddled up to keep warm on cold winter nights. I'm sure it felt homey with the tongue and groove paneling on the ceiling.
This is downstairs and shows the remnants of the wallpaper the family hung to beautify their country home. Aunt Wanda remembers visiting her friend and cousin, Sybil Peters, and spending the night. Sybil's home, with no electricity or running water, was very different from Aunt Wanda's home - the little house on the ridge where she was born, which both power and water laid on.
One high point of the day for me was looking at the photos which some of the folks had brought. Lucille brought a little scrapbook someone had made for her with quite a few pictures and I scanned some of those in to my computer. I'll share just a few here, as I haven't had the time, or the good health, to work with them much yet. When I do, (Kay!!) I'll be sure to post or send them on. This picture above is a gem. It's Lucian Peters and his wife, Mary Jane, with one of their grandchildren. Lucian is the older brother of our Noble B. Peters, and this is the first really good picture of him that I've ever seen.
Here's a page lifted right from Lucille's little book and you can see Earl Peters, who was Lucian's son, and would have been my mother's first cousin.
And this one was very interesting I thought as it's a picture of Francisco Peters's brother, George, and his first wife. I have to admit that every time one of these very old pictures turns up, it gives me renewed hope that we may someday stumble across one of William Patton Peters and his wife, Nancy Stallard. I keep thinking of the one Aunt Wanda has of my grandfather, Noble Peters, as a very young child, maybe 2 years old, or thereabouts. Surely, they wouldn't have had ONLY his picture taken that day? He had two older brothers living at that time - Charles and Lucian, and sister Carrie may have been a tiny babe in arms - and would they not have had pictures taken of all of them? And if so, why not one of the whole family?? This is what keeps returning to my mind. And I can't help believing that those pictures are out there, somewhere, not far from here, perhaps behind other photos in a frame or in an old moldy box in someone's attic, waiting for us to find them. I, for one, intend to keep looking!
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