January 10, 2023
Letters 1/8/2023
| Hi Cousins, I hope everyone had a great year in 2022 and I want to wish you all a happy New Year for 2023! As we look back over last year, may we fondly remember the time we shared at the Low Dutch Cousins gathering and all the memories we made as our Low Dutch family came together to connect, reconnect, and learn! I want to encourage everyone to spend a few moments to share your messages, stories and findings! Please send them in to be shared on the website! This is one way we can all stay connected throughout the year! Thank you in advance for your contributions! We are already looking forward to 2024 which will be our next gathering! It is amazing how fast time flies! We must be having fun! I wanted to let you know we have some great ideas brewing and many speakers lined up already so stay tuned in! Wishing you all a warm winter and a beautiful spring on the way! Warm regards, Chris Canine Low Dutch Cousins President ——————————————————————————————————- Hello Cousins……and Happy New Year! Hoping 2023 will bring you many Blessings, good health, happiness, kindness, and peace! I wanted to take some time and talk about our September 2022 DC Gathering and say, I think we all had a wonderful time. If you couldn’t make it…..we missed you and wished you were there!! We certainly understood the reasons a lot of you couldn’t make it; with the lingering threat of Covid, the higher cost of travel, food, hotels, etc., it’s been a difficult time for many. Our count was low this year with 56 attending, representing 16 different states. It’s exciting to say, we had 16 new cousins that came in 2022, that had never been to a gathering before, and all said they had a great time! They were really excited to be there and wanted to find out more about our/their Dutch Cousins roots. We were blessed to get to know you along with reminiscing with our cousins we knew from the past. I hope everyone is looking forward to our next gathering in 2024. As the Dutch Cousin’s Treasurer, I want to say, we are a Non-profit organization. We as a group do not collect any Membership fees and try not to increase our prices for the gatherings. All our Officers and Committee members that help organize our DC gatherings are all volunteers. We do not use any funds from the DC account for anything other than expenses/supplies needed for the gatherings. We sometimes pay with our own money for items needed just to make sure our gatherings are special and exciting for those who attend. I’m very excited to say this year; we had a very generous ‘anonymous’ donor that donated $1,000.00 to the Dutch Cousins. We also had several donations from some of our Cousins that sent their donations in with their registration forms. We want to say ‘THANK YOU’ for your generosity in giving!! This was a big help with our 2022 gathering, having a lower attendance and less funds than normal. This money helped with having enough ‘seed’ money to start up our 2024 gathering. The Dutch Cousins have always supported The Old Mud Meeting House as much as we can. This is where we attend our Sunday morning church service the weekend of each gathering. In 2022 The Low Dutch Cousins were able to donate: $1,500.00 to The Old Mud Meeting House to help with maintenance costs and repairs to one of the interior walls that collapsed a few months ago. Our donation came from the gatherings Silent Auction items sold and the Old Mud Meeting House Church Service offering. $800.00 was donated to The Harold R. Benson Research Farm for allowing us to use their beautiful facility for our gathering. $250.00 was donated to The Harrodsburg Historical Society for supporting/hosting us on our Monday’s ‘Family Research’ day and storing our DC inventory. $318.00 was also donated to the Conewago Low Dutch Cemetery in Gettysburg, PA for upkeep and maintenance to one of our very own Dutch Cemeteries. I hope this information helps you a bit to understand our group, as a whole. If you have any questions or concerns, please ask. Blessings to all our Cousins, Janice Cozine DC Treasurer & Registration Chair ——————————————————————————————————- Dear Cousins, I hope you had a Merry Christmas or a happy holiday with your friends and family. One gift I shared with my family is a book I created with the help of my sister, focused on the life and heritage of my father. I was able to combine history of my father’s strong Dutch roots as well as his life adventures and photos to help tell the story. My siblings, nieces and nephews are enjoying the book and remembering their father, grandfather, and other ancestors. The idea to use a photo book was introduced in a genealogy magazine. It is a nice way to use old photos to tell life stories. I encourage all the cousins to consider photo books as a way to preserve family history! All the best health and happiness in 2023! Mary Jo Gohmann  ——————————————————————————————————- Judith Smith Cassidy wrote: Subject: A Different Perspective as to why Henry Banta May have left Conewago for Kentucky Message Body: Why Henry Banta may have left Conewago, along with the group from Berkeley Va in the midst of the Revolutionary War. “Mr. Robert McCallister, a civilian not associated with military officers holding the same rank who was chosen to be the York County Lieutenant for York County informed the freemen of York in the days to come, that they were no longer volunteers in service to York County but draftees for the Pennsylvania State Militia.” Many freemen simply refused to cooperate with Mr. McCallister. The German Families assembled with in a mile of Hanover in York Co., declared to “bind themselves to each other that they would not muster nor go in the militia in any way, nor offer their effects to be old to pay any fine , and would stand by each other at the risque of their lives, to kill every man who distressed them. They intended to go to McCallister’s house and either kill him or beat so he would not be any trouble to them any more.” Despite this, McCallister still had trouble organizing the Militia and “on 4 July, he observed that the freemen would not meet to choose officers nor serve and had threatened the lives of the officers that had accepted commissions. A letter dated 21 1777 was sent to Vice President Bryan by Archibald Mc Clean, a justice in York Town regarding McCallister’s handling of the forming of the militia. He noted that no one class of the Battalion was formed and that he offered to McCallister his services to do just that.” In 1777 Congress mandated that the men who enlisted must sign on for three years or the duration of the conflict which ever came first, offers of cash and land bounties became an absolute necessity. The states and the army also turned to slick-tongues recruiters to round up volunteers, Geo Washington had urged conscription so by the end of 1778, most states were conscripting men when Congress “voluntary enlistment quotas were not met. Few who owned farms, including the Low Dutch, were willing to serve the duration fearing the loss of their property especially if years passed without them being able to maintain their farms and pay their taxes. The average non-Low Dutch soldier was young, single, and poor. However, that was not the case with the Low Dutch men. This is definitely one very important reason that the migrations from Conewago and, beginning with Henry Banta took place in the fall of 1779 during the middle of the War which lasted until 1783. ——————————————————————————————————- Chris Canine wrote: Dad and I took a very cold trip to Andre Faul’s farm on 11/19/22! Dad bought a fresh farm raised Turkey from Andre to show our support and thanks for his presentation at the 2022 Low Dutch Cousins event! He said he enjoyed speaking to us last summer and was happy to show us his family operation! We really liked his barn where he holds special events! It would be heavenly in the summer but the wind coming through at 20 degrees was brutal! I hope you all enjoy the pictures of his farm and that it brings back fond memories of the gathering for those that attended last summer and heard him speak in one of our sessions! I hope you all had a most Happy Thanksgiving and Christmas! We have so many things to be thankful for! I hope you all have a happy New Year in 2023! Blessings, Chris Canine     ——————————————————————————————————-Chris Canine wrote: My dad Jon and I made a trip down to Harrodsburg KY in early December to give my cousin Todd Lineback (Canine) a history day on our Low Dutch heritage! When we went to the Harrodsburg Historical Society, we spent a moment in remembrance of Carolyn as her plaque is set over the Low Dutch Collection. Todd was so excited to hold the communion cup from the old mud meetinghouse that is dated July 23, 1796! We also took him out to the Low Dutch Cemetery in Pleasureville, KY to see where some of our cousins are buried (Todd pictured at Albert Voris grave). We had a great time sharing and learning about our family and all the Cousins that day! My question to you all is when is the last time you have had a trip with family or friends to keep the memories of our families alive? Maybe you could put that on your bucket list for 2023 and go on a family adventure! Warm regards, Chris Canine    ——————————————————————————————————-Hi Cousins, I just wanted to give an update on the Old Mud Meetinghouse repair as of January 2023. Chicken wire has been placed in the damaged areas for support until repairs can be done this summer. Amalie and Monty surveyed the situation and came up with a plan and estimate for the work to be done. Currently HHS is about $700 from receiving enough donations to pay for this repair project. If anyone is so inclined to help fill the gap for the repairs, it would be greatly appreciated by the Harrodsburg Historical Society! Checks can be made to the Harrodsburg Historical Society, PO Box 316, Harrodsburg, KY 40330, notation: Old Mud. On behalf of all the volunteers at the HHS, Goedendag en hartelijk bedankt! A Special thanks and blessing to Mr. And Mrs. Cochran who came out and power washed the outside of the school Old Mud and the outhouse for their daughter’s wedding at Old Mud! They also removed the plexiglass to clean the windows and now we will be able to have them open in the summer when needed! I would also like to thank Bobby Riley for all the mowing and care he shows for the Old Mud Property! Warm regards, Chris Canine  ——————————————————————————————————- Cheryl Allen wrote to be added to our mailing list: Dutch connection: My great-grandmother was a Banta. Her parents settled in northwest Missouri. I have traced my ancestry to Hendrick Banta who took his family from Pennsylvania to Kentucky. |
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