gigamatic

Ok. So I have two concurrently running family projects. One is the cookbook, based in my grandmother's recipes.

The second is an annotated family tree, complete with photos, if possible, detailing as much history as can be gathered, until things start to break up too far.

To that end, in between things here at work, I used my membership to an evil Mormon conglomerate website which is self-renewing and catches me off-guard some months, to tell the relative ages in the following photo:

Now, I know that my grandmother was the baby, age 1.
Her mother, Martha Malinda, far right, was 21.
Her grandmother, Abbie E., was 43.
Her great grandfather, Silas Maxim (or maybe Maxham), was 82! He lived to be 94! There's my hope for good family genes.

"[Silas] had an enviable reputation as an orchardist and planted hundreds of apple trees. He stored for winter 100 bushels of apples of 70 varieties and also raised plums, cherries, pears and grapes in quantity. His seven hives of bees provided sweets for the family. His greatest recorded accomplishment was the development of the famous [family] cranberry bogs (1880) which covered seven acres just across the road. He cleared a wooded swamp, drained it, dug ditches, divided it into beds and set the vines. Production was excellent, considered the best in the state, accomplished by years of hard work which resulted in a yield of more than 600 bushels annually. Silas was known for his remarkable physical endowments. He attended the annual [family] reunions at Boston and Sandwich [which still happen today] and his wit and quaint sayings were popular. He and his brother [...] and his sister [...] helped organize and start the [big reunion in Maine]."

I SWEAR I did not make that sentence up. It's from the family history!