On Sunday, May 16, 1999 the descendants
of Nicodemus Kornegay (1862-1933) and
his wife Alice Goodson (1862-1904) held
their 11th annual reunion at the Snow Hill Free Will Baptist Church Fellowship Hall in
Duplin County, North Carolina. All family members on the mailing list received an invitation for the much anticipated event and
about 100 people came. The Kornegay Family has spread far and wide and this is one
opportunity when the members of this great extended family make a concerted effort to come
together. As it happens, the church is close to the original land of the
Nicodemus Kornegay family so it was quite fitting that the reunion be held so close to the
land that binds us all together.
Although each family was asked to bring a covered dish or
dessert, no North Carolina get-together would be complete without pork barbecue and cole
slaw and hush puppies. You see (especially you Texas and New Mexico Kornegays), in
North Carolina "barbecue" is a noun and not a verb. Just as in the old
days; the barbecue tradition is alive and strong. Donnell Kornegay spent all night
cooking the pig and cut it up just before the Reunion. Of course, we had all the
other Southern standbys to choose from, too. There was chicken and pastry, butter
beans, boiled potatoes, fried chicken, cornbread, snap beans; the list is endless.
And those were only the main courses and side dishes; the dessert table was also fully
laden with cakes and pies. And to wash it all down, there was an ocean of ice tea. We remembered all those Kornegays who have
passed on in recent years and hailed the ones born in the past year. It's sad not to
see beloved faces, but the faces of the young ones make us aware of the great circle of
life and the part we all play in it.
One of the traditions of past years was for the members of
the families of the nine surviving children of Nicodemus and Alice to group together and
for the senior member of each family to introduce themselves and the members of their
extended family that accompanied them. Sadly, with the death of Irving Kornegay in 1994, there are no living
members of the original family left. Still there are two women who remember
Nicodemus Kornegay (called N.D.); the wife of Randall
(Duff) Kornegay, Mrs. Louise Holmes Kornegay (95 years old) and the wife of
Irving Kornegay, Mrs. Mildred Merritt Kornegay (90 years old). Well, we broke from
tradition this year and started something new. We took a picture of each family
group (there were way too many people to get in one shot) and we proudly present them
here!
I know you don't want to look at some tiny, thumbnail
pictures of the reunion so I've kept them large and they're full of detail. But it's
a trade-off; small pictures - quick download; big pictures - longer download. To
save processing time, I've made links to the photos of the family groups instead of
putting them all on one page. Together, they're on the order of 2.2 MB of data and I
doubt that anyone wants to wait for a page THAT large to load! Click on the link to
see the full-size picture and use your BACK button or follow the link
provided to return to this page. There will be a short explanation acompanying each
full-sized graphic. Please help me out by identifying the people in the photos.
If we have mis-named people or are in error in some other way, please send email to
me at jbquinn@cox.net
and I'll
fix it straight-away. Follow the hyper-links in the graphics captions and they'll
help you see how we're all connected.
(Note: If you want to copy these picture to your
computer, right-click on an individual graphic with your mouse and follow the
instructions.)
Additional pictures of interest to the Kornegay family -
Waterloo, the home of the
Simmons Family
Kornegay's Bridge area
Probability Church
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