From my limited acquaintance with the great body of these relatives, I judge them to be largely a fine, whole-hearted style of people, actively filling good useful places in our common American life. My correspondents among them have, with a very few exceptions, been total strangers to me, but there has been nearly always a helpful, kindly response to every request for information. I would like to know more about them, which is not by any means likely. While this record introduces me to them, as well as to others, I hope it will have the effect of introducing the separate groups of Orrs, Wansbroughs and McDonalds, and their various subconnections to one another, and to the larger fraternity of the general Trout connection. For this purpose I have given residences as well as I could. We all converge in Aunt Harriet. She is great enough, good and lovable enough, to be the common center of esteem and affection for all of us. The father in this case is largely unknown; but the remembrance of Aunt continues, as both a pride and a pleasure to all that have known or heard about her. Her name is the most popular in the whole connection. There are twelve Harriets. We feel that these brief references are but scant justice to one we so highly esteem and to so large and worthy a line of relatives, but space forbids more attention. We must go forward with the next in order. RACHEL TROUT MCDONALD. The marrying season in grandfather's family began in 1826, when in the common parlance of old times, Aunt Ann "jumped the broomstick" at the good age of twenty-three. Then on the second day of January, 1827, Aunt Harriet followed suit, at nearly nineteen and one-half years. Then on March twenty-first, the subject of our present notice tied the nuptial knot. Father and Uncle Henry were also married the same year. Aunt Rachel was the youngest in entering the married state, being scarcely seventeen and one-half, and her boy spouse, though just three years older, was more than six months short of man's estate. How much we all would have liked to have been at that wedding. It was thirty-five years |