The Hancock reunion was July 22–23. I
started writing about it last month but got completely sidetracked with camping and stuff. I would like to know how it's already the middle of August. Now I have to try to remember what happened a month ago and I can barely remember what happened yesterday so...we'll do lots of pictures.
Rachel quickly made friends with a little third-cousin of hers, who I'll just call L.
My great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Thomas Hancock (who is buried in Nauvoo) was third cousins to John Hancock (the signer of the Declaration of Independence). I always knew I was related to him but it always seemed so distant—he didn't have any living descendants so no one is directly related to him but third cousins always seemed so far apart to me. To have this picture of Rachel snuggling up to one of her third cousins was kind of mind boggling.
It's possible that my Thomas Hancock was hobnobbing it up with John Hancock at a family reunion when they were four years old. Of course, John Hancock was born in Braintree and Thomas Hancock was born in Longmeadow and those towns/cities are over a hundred miles apart so I'm not sure how often they would have seen each other back in the 1700s. Still. It's possible. And that's kind of neat.
