The Hovey Book
By the Daniel Hovey Association
The HOVEY BOOK owes its existence to the wishes and combined efforts of many individuals. The materials have been drawn from all parts of New England, and even from distant regions of the Continent and from foreign lands. Here and there have lived men and women of today who longed to know more facts than were in their possession concerning their ancestors. They ransacked attics for ancient relics and old family documents. They frequented bookstores, and old curiosity shops. They tried to build up family traditions and records into consistent genealogies. They made scrap-books filled with clippings, often disconnected and less authentic than could be desired. They did not disdain any scrap of information that might come to hand concerning anybody by the name of Hovey.
Meanwhile the scattered branches of the family did not even know of each other's existence, much less of the kindred aims that led them to similar lines of independent research. It is impossible to do justice in these pages to every individual whose patient mind and diligent hand have wrought out the results now for the first time offered in a combined form to the public. Yet this passing recognition is due to those who have even secretly taken a wholesome and praiseworthy interest in their colonial ancestry.
By way of introduction the writer, who has from the first been honored as the President of the Daniel Hovey Association, desires to tell the story of its origin and aims, of its various annual and mid-winter meetings, of its officers and members, and also to give a few facts of interest that hardly seem germane to the body of the book.
In May, 1900, on a grassy knoll, under a gnarled and twisted apple-tree, near the spot where the Newbury pilgrims landed long ago, two families by the name of Hovey, one from Portsmouth and the other from Newburyport, picnicked together. They found the occasion so agreeable as to suggest a larger family gathering; to effect which the following circular was issued with a few additional names: -
DEAR COUSIN:
You are invited with kith and kin to Ipswich, the home of our common immigrant ancestor, Daniel Hovey. Let us meet at noon, on Tuesday, the twenty-first of August (or if stormy, the next fair day), at the rooms of the Ipswich Historical Society, near the railroad station in that city.
After a friendly interchange of greetings, we will visit the Public Library and other points of interest. Dinner will await us at 2 p. m., at fifty cents a plate, at the Agawam House.
At 3 p. m. we will proceed to the foot of Hovey street and cross the river by row-boats to the ruins of the Hovey Home and the remains of the...
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