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About 200 relatives attended the Boggs, Mollohan and Sutton reunion this
Sunday at Big Otter.
The Charleston
Gazette
Nearly All In The Family
Reunion Calls Family Back To Clay County From All
Over
Monday July 1, 2002
By Chandra Broadwater
STAFF WRITER
BIG OTTER — Larry Mollohan had no
idea how thickly twisted the branches of his
family tree were until he bought his
great-great-grandfather's home.
"You can't believe the astonishment I had
being related to so many people," Mollohan
said as relatives, close and distant alike,
roamed throughout his yard and home. "I
have literally hundreds of cousins around
here.
"I like to joke and say out of the 8,000
registered people in Clay County, I'm
related to about 7,999 of them."
About 200 people gathered for the fourth
annual Boggs, Mollohan and Sutton family
reunion Sunday in Big Otter, about 40
minutes north of Charleston. Descendants
of the families, most of whom are related by marriage, came
prepared with nametags, lawn chairs and good stories to
tell.
Mollohan bought the former home of his great-grandfather,
James
Martin Boggs, when the big white house was up for sale in
1997.
He plans to renovate the 16-room, century-old home during
his
retirement.
Mollohan and his wife, Helen, along with other family
members,
decided to organize a reunion for the many relatives living in
the
area and across the country. "We've got people here from
Arizona, Atlanta, California, all of the surrounding states,"
Mollohan said. "They're from all over." Following the first
reunion in 1998, the family decided to keep the gatherings
going as
long as they could.
On Sunday, old and young members of the family enjoyed
memories, food, live music, door prizes and an auction to
help pay
for the reunion expenses.
"It's really good because the younger generation don't have
the
heritage that the older people do," said Susan McCracken,
great-great-granddaughter of one of James Boggs' children
and the
youngest of 15 children. "My mother was here with my oldest
sister at the last reunion way back in 1927."
Dorothy Mollohan McCracken, 93, is Susan's mother. From
her
perch at the front door of her great-grandfather's former
home,
she said she thought Sunday's festivities were going well.
Everything except the volume of the music.
"They were making so much racket out there on the porch, if
we
were by a cemetery, we'd be raising the dead," she said,
laughing.
In the midst of all the nametags, black-and-white photos,
mentions
of great-great-grandparents and third cousins, some at the
reunion
felt a little lost.
"I don't know half of them," said Sarah Pardue, 27, of
Bastian,
Va. Her mother was a Mollohan, she says. "My mother
comes to
these things and she knows everybody, where they live, how
they're related. "I really don't know anything other that I'm
mainly related to the Mollohans."
Dorothy McCracken, the only grandchild named after her
grandmother, agreed. "It is confusing," she said. "But we're
all
connected."
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