A reunion may be titled “the John and Susan Smith reunion,” but it may included a broader set of relatives and family friends.
The Dirks family of northeastern Adams County had a reunion for several years in the 1930s. I thought, based on the name of reunion that it was for the descendants of Bernard and Heipke (Mueller) Dirks of Coatsburg, Illinois, who were married in 1856. In looking through the names, I realized attendees were not just Bernard and Heipke’s descendants–there were a number of attendees who were children and grandchildren of Anke (Mueller) Adams, sister of Heipke. So it might have more accurately been termed the Mueller reunion.
That turned out to be more true than I realized. In trying to figure out who everyone was in a 1930-era list of attendees, there were a few individuals that could not be fit in the family of either Heipke or Anke. I originally thought they might have been long-term neighbors or friends of the family.
They were not.
A handful of attendees were descendants of a Mueller uncle of Heipke and Anke who arrived in the United States a few years before the sisters arrived.
So it really was a Mueller reunion after all. And tracking all those attendees gave me more information than I expected to obtain.
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