Reunion Writeups Can Clarify and Confuse

1962 was the 25th year members of the Trautvetter and Schildman clans gathered in Warsaw, Illinois, for a day of food and festivities.

The writeup of the reunion in the local newspaper serves to remind of several things about reunions and the writeups that sometimes resulted.

Reunions can easily encompass more than one family. The Trautvetter and Schildman families had a joint reunion because two Trautvetter brothers married Schildman sisters and a joint reunion made sense. Most of the Trautvetter attendees descended from the brothers who married the Schildman sisters or siblings of those two brothers. A few other Trautvetters who attended were descendants of first cousins of those brothers.

Not everyone in attendance is named. The reference to my grandfather, Cecil Neill, says that “Cecil Neil and family” attended. It is not certain exactly who “and family” referred to, but based on the rest of the writeup, it at least included his wife and oldest grandson.

Not everyone who attended is necessarily a relative. The Mrs. Ola Hawes (actually “Howes”) was neither a Trautvetter or a Schildman either by birth or marriage. Her mother’s oldest sister married a Trautvetter nearly 100 years before the reunion and many of her cousins would have been in attendance.