I spent more time with my cousin Neil, my mom’s twin sisters second boy, than any of my other cousins. We spent countless hours at our Grandma Jenkins house on Mosby Creek, not too far from Cottage Grove, Oregon. We swam and explored and just hung out together making plans for many, many fondly remembered days. I spoke to Neil for a good amount of time on Saturday. We talked about a lot of very interesting things, but one of them was about the family genealogy he is putting together. I will try to talk a little more about that as he progresses and he gets more information–he has over 800 names on the list right now, one of which I saw went all the way back to 1572 (a 10th great grandfather). One of our most interesting things we talked about was that our great, great grandfather, Steve Jenkins was involved in the establishing of the Palestine, Oregon Baptist Church in the 1850’s. I looked it up on Google Maps and found out that the center of Palestine is only 2.2 miles from our old house in Albany. Neil promised to send me some pages from an old book he has about some of the old Oregon preachers that has a chapter on Steve Jenkins. I will report anything interesting I find here. It was great to get back in touch with Neil and his family. One of his wife, Carol’s, best friends lives out here in North Carolina, so we hope to see them out here before too long!
