peter sanborn

In the course of building this website and capturing the family history, my Aunt Camilla (Camilla Parlin Smith) was instrumental in providing stories, photographs, and family anecdotes.  I enjoyed my emails back and forth with her and getting to know her better after 30 years had passed between us. 

 

At one point she mentioned she had a binder of stories and photos from her attempts in the early 1990s to organize Volume 4 of the Family History.  For a variety of reasons that project fizzled, but she had preserved everything with care. 

 

“Would you like to finish the project?” she asked me.  At that point I had just completed building the website and documenting the History of Pudding Island Farm so I passed on her offer. 

 

“Well let me just mail you all this stuff in case you change your mind” she said with a slight undertone of persistence.

 

About a year passed and I started talking with my second cousin Chris Parlin about the idea.  Chris and I represent the “bookends” of our generation.  He’s the oldest, I’m the youngest.  Chris was enthusiastic about the idea and sent an email to the family email group.  The response was positive, so we decided to go for it.

 

From Camilla’s earlier work there were already about 15 stories or so to start.  Since those stories were written 30 years ago, I sent them to the authors for their review and updates.  They definitely got a kick out of remembering where their lives and minds were three decades ago.

 

Then the new stories started coming in.  In all Volume 4 contains 40 stories.  The stories span 3 generations.  It was a lot of work to pull together but the dividend for me was reconnecting with family members who I haven’t heard from in so long.  I especially enjoyed reconnecting with so many of the “older cousins” who, since I was always the youngest, I held in my memory as legendary characters.

 

My final thought as I’m wrapping up Volume 4 is this…what about Volume 5?  What will the family look like in 20-30 years?  What will Pudding Island Farm look like in 20-30 years?  My hope is that it doesn’t look that different then it does today, apart from a new generation filling out the family tree and building their own traditions and memories here.  Pudding Island Farm is such a unique place and, hopefully, will continue to serve as platform that supports current and future generations of the descendants of CHARLES COOLIDGE PARLIN and DAISY BLACKWOOD PARLIN.