Stereoscopic Viewing and Reunion

Here I am, still kicking. I know it's been a long time. I want to tell you about this great new book I bought, A Village Lost and Found, by Brian May and Elena Vidal.
When I was a girl, my cousins and sisters loved to view the stereoscopic slides at my Grandma and Grandpa Anderson 's house. They had an extensive set. Nobody knows what happened to them. Sigh! This book reproduces a series of slides taken in the 1850s by T.R. Williams, one of the first developers of the technique. They are "Scenes in our Village," Hinton Waldrist in England. The book comes boxed with a fold-up stereoscopic viewer. Very cool.

Another reason I've been lax in blogging, is I've been busy as registrar for the Mendenhall Family Association reunion 2010 in Mendenhall, Pennsylvania. My great-grandmother was Sarah Ann Mendenhall Mount. I spent the 90s doing a lot of genealogical research and I have attended all five of the Association reunions since 1996. The immigrant Mendenhalls were four Quaker siblings, John, Benjamin, Mary and Margery who came from Wiltshire, England, in the early 1680s. John and Benjamin bought land directly from William Penn or from speculators who did and didn't immigrate. I'm descended from John. In the picture above, I am standing in front of the house in Caln township, Pennsylvania, that was built about 1714 by John's son Aaron, my sixth-great grandfather.

We had good weather, except it was hot, for our three days of tours. Mendenhalls were active in the Underground Railroad, and we saw some of the houses used for hiding fugitive slaves, as well as home sites and meeting houses of the early Mendenhalls. Some current owners of the houses allowed us to tour inside. Very generous. They are proud of the history of their homes and have a challenge preserving them while making them comfortable for modern living. They are all made of native stone, contributing to the beauty of the Pennsylvania countryside.