My mother’s maternal family has deep roots in a small town on the Hudson River called Garrison. When she was a child, almost all of her 21 first cousins lived within a mile or so of each other there, and throughout their lives the cousins have kept in touch with frequent family reunions.
Benjamin Reunion at Ienia 2010
I remember as a child myself traveling up to Garrison for a Thanksgiving dinner or some other family occasion. My great-grandmother—we called her “Gongi”—ruled the family from her house Ienia, a huge late-Victorian house that once housed her nine children, governesses, guests, maids, cooks and the rest of the multitudes that large households of the day required. Gathered for the meal would be the nine children, their spouses, the 22 grandchildren with their spouses, and way down at the end (out the door into the hallway at this point) were all of us great-grands with assorted babysitters and keepers.
Fifty people would be present, and everyone would shake their heads going, “Isn’t it too bad so few could make it this year!”
In time, as the older generations passed on, the big house was sold (today it belongs to a former Governor of New York), but a piece of the original property with what had been a guest cottage remained in the family, eventually becoming my Aunt Jan’s home. My mother frequently went up to stay with her sister Jan, and over the years her house was the venue for many family events and reunions.
Now, sadly but inevitably, that is coming to an end. Jan is finding the upkeep of her house and property increasingly difficult as she gets older, and so she made the decision to move closer to one of her kids—one’s in Alaska, the other is in Florida. Alaska is a bit… chilly… so Florida got the nod.
So this is the end of an era in the family. There will always be happy memories associated with the place in my mind, and of course I can continue to visit many of my ancestors in the churchyard of St. Philips Church, but there’s still a good deal of heaviness in my heart over the loss of tangible piece of my past.
