Haines Family Association, Inc.

Dear Members and Friends:

This year we will be celebrating our 231st year and 10 generations on the Mountaintop here in the beautiful Catskill Mountains of New York State at our annual reunion held in Haines Falls at the South Lake Pavilion, NYS North-South Lake Campground. All are welcome for the entire day as we socialize, picnic, play games, take our group photo, tell stories about our ancestors, have a baking contest, sharing table, give out awards, and conduct our annual meeting. Please bring sharing table snacks, your photo albums, family trees, genealogical research, collections, and anything else you think would be of interest.

As you continue to read through this newsletter, I will be referring you to our website, which is HainesFamilyAssociation.org, for more details on noteworthy items that occurred during the past year. Two are very sad: the passing of our HFA vice-president Bill Haines on February 24, 2010 and Hillard Hommel on March 4, 2010. See our website for their obituaries. We miss them both.

We’ve also had some major accomplishments this year. You may recall that some time ago we brought to the public’s attention the bravery and ultimate sacrifice of Haines Falls native Lt. Richard A. Haines, commissioned a ship’s plaque in his memory and erected it on a Veterans’ Memorial. On May 15, 2010, out of 155 candidates, Lt. Haines received the Honor a Deceased Veteran award for Greene County at the Greene County Office Building, Catskill. See our website for the complete newspaper coverage.

In addition, the Town of Hunter has taken the initiative to rename what is now known as North Lake Road, in Haines Falls, the Lt. Richard A. Haines Memorial Highway, which passes by the High View House where he was born. The Town has our wholehearted support in this effort.

On May 26th work was completed on the Route 23A curb cut accessing our new right-of-way (ROW) road to the Aaron Haines Cemetery in Haines Falls. On May 27th we received NYS DOT approval to use this curb cut. Our HFA maintenance of this cemetery is ongoing. We plan on cutting trees and bulldozing at the north end of the new road to complete access to the cemetery this summer. Bulldozing is expensive. Please keep that in mind when you fill out your membership renewal this year. The first $5 is your membership dues, the remainder can be allocated to either Cemetery or General Fund.

Our HFA groundskeeping crew is celebrating its 15th year maintaining the MTHS Campus grounds, once owned by our ancestors.  We hope to complete the ROW road to the rescued Layman Family Burying Ground and at least begin our rescue of the Peter B. Haines’ Cemetery this summer. We have a special incentive to work on and complete these projects as soon as possible in memory of Bill Haines this year.

HFA charitable donations thus far in 2010 include Relay For Life (cancer) $100, West Kill Community Cemetery $50 and Mountaintop Historical Society $50 (both in memory of Bill Haines), and Haines Falls Cemetery, Inc., $200 (pays off perpetual care on one long-past-due Haines plot).

The Haines Family Association now participates in New York’s Adopt-A-Highway Program. Signs with our name on it have been erected at either end of our two-mile stretch of Route 23A west of the Village of Hunter. We had our first pickup on May 29th.

A feature article on our Haines ancestors was published in the Summer Edition of the MTHS Hemlock newsletter last year. You can read it on our web site, as well as many other items of interest.

Sue Haines continues to look for historical documents and photos to scan into our data base. She will be at our reunion in July. She can also be contacted by sending an e-mail to our web site.

Speaking of our HFA web site, Sandy Palmer, our webmaster, is doing a fantastic job, and she is always looking for interesting items to add to it. You can contact her via our website also.

Rachel, Harriet, Sue and others did a great job having more activities for children at last year’s reunion. We anticipate having more of the same this year.

If you need a place to stay for the reunion, you may contact www.GreeneTourism.com or www.travelerdiscountguide.com for the Northeast. See you soon.

My best regards,
Richard E. “Cousin Dick” Haines
President, Haines Family Association

Dear Members and Friends:

This year we’ll be celebrating 230 years and 10 generations on the Mountaintop here in the Town of Hunter, Greene County, NY. As usual, our reunion will be held in Haines Falls, NY, at the South Lake Pavilion, NYS North-South Lake Campground. The Pavilion is ours for the day, and you may come as early as you wish to enjoy this beautiful spot. Most folks show up between 10:00 and 11:00 and have a picnic around noon, followed by our annual meeting, games, group photo, baking contest, awards, story telling, etc. Please bring sharing table snacks and your photo albums, genealogy, collections, anything you think would be of interest.

The historic Aaron Haines Cemetery is looking better than ever. Our maintenance, regrading, reseeding and fertilizing is showing off the cemetery to good advantage. This spring we planted 50 Colorado blue spruce transplants on the west shoulder of the new right of way that we were granted by the Mountain Top Historical Society. They will eventually provide a living fence and will tend to take your eye off the tall building behind them. The completion of the right of way to the cemetery has been delayed by NYS DOT’s insistence on a new application, fee, insurance, etc., for an entrance curb cut at Route 23A--more expense and red tape. I will follow up on that after several more pressing issues are dealt with. If we have to pay a contractor to construct the curb cut, it will more than use up whatever funds we presently have in our Cemetery Fund. Please keep this in mind when you check the boxes for your membership donation this year. Your first $5 goes toward membership dues, the rest towards Cemetery or General Fund. Your donations are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.

The historic Layman Cemetery that we restored is in good shape. The right of way to this cemetery is awaiting a load of fill and more work with the backhoe/front end loader. The cemetery is accessible, but you have to walk to it from Fern Ridge Road, in Haines Falls.

The historic Peter B. Haines Cemetery, off O’Hara Road in Haines Falls, is on our to-do list for rescue and restoration later this summer. Some of the earliest mountaintop settlers are buried here, including Edward and Mariam Haines.

The historic Griswald (Schoonmaker/Dibble) Cemetery in Platte Clove is also on our to-do list to be rescued and restored.

Our HFA groundskeeping crew is celebrating its 14th year maintaining the Mountain Top Historical Society (MTHS) Campus grounds, which were owned by our ancestors at one time.
A feature article on our Haines ancestors will be published in the summer edition of the MTHS Hemlock newsletter. If you are not already a member of the MTHS, go to www.mths.org and sign up. It’s a great organization that shares many common goals with the HFA.

Our HFA web site  www.HainesFamilyAssociation.org  is really coming along, thanks to Sandy Palmer, who takes care of it for us. It is a work in progress and is getting better and more comprehensive all the time. Check it out.

Our 23rd Reunion on Saturday, June 11th will have more activities for the children. Among others, this year we are hoping to have a nature theme for the children. We will be making pinwheels and decorating plastic containers for a short hike. We also hope to find some Monarch eggs/caterpillars to hatch (that’s what we will use the containers for). A scavenger hunt might be fun on a hike to the Mountain House site to help familiarize the children with local plant life.

Our Treasurer’s Report is enclosed, as are our May 23rd Directors’ meeting minutes. As recommended by our Board of Directors, we have increased our donations to charities in an effort to be good citizens, also allocations in support of HFA goals.
A very important process has begun: Sue Haines is now scanning our voluminous archival materials for preservation and future reference and research. If you have important documents or photographs that you would like scanned into our HFA data base, contact Sue Haines.

If you need a place to stay for the reunion, contact www.GreeneTourism.com or www.travelerdiscountguide.com for the Northeast. See you soon!

My best regards,
Richard E. “Cousin Dick” Haines
President, HFA

Dear Members and Friends:

The Haines Family Association will be dedicating a plaque in memory of Lt. Richard A. Haines at the Veterans’ Memorial on the campus of the Mountain Top Historical Society, Haines Falls, at 10:00 a.m., followed by our annual HFA Reunion and meeting at the South Lake Pavilion, New York State North-South Lake Camp Ground, Haines Falls, New York.  When attending the plaque dedication at 10:00 a.m., please park in either the large or the small blacktop parking areas at the MTHS Campus.

Thank you for your ideas and suggestions as to how we could appropriately honor the memory of Lt. Haines. We tried to incorporate them in the plaque which shows his photo, rank, medals and states as follows: “Richard Alexander Haines was born in Haines Falls, NY, on April 28, 1903. He attended the Tennessee Military Institute from 1921-1923, attended the Naval Academy for a time, and served in the Coast Guard from 1928-1931. Haines was Commissioned a Lieutenant in the Naval Reserve on July 23, 1941, served in Washington, and was eventually assigned to the cruiser USS New Orleans (CA-32). When the USS New Orleans suffered a devastating torpedo hit in the Battle of Tassafaronga on November 30, 1942, Lieutenant Haines remained at his station to assist in controlling the damage until overcome by asphyxiating gas generated by the explosion. In the true tradition of the Navy he gave his life to save his shipmates, and he was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and the Navy Cross for his heroism. He was buried in California where his family lived. To Honor Lieutenant Haines’ memory, on December 27, 1943 the destroyer escort USS Haines (DE-792) was commissioned and served throughout the remainder of WWII performing various duties, earning one Battle Star.”

In addition to the plaque being affixed to the Veterans’ Memorial, we made an extra to replace the plaque when it weathers, and a beautiful wood-framed original which can be made available for interior display and loaned to those who desire to show it.

Aaron Haines’ Cemetery:
Since our 2007 reunion, we have done much work at this cemetery which before we took over the maintenance had been neglected for many years. In addition to the normal fertilizing and mowing, this year we dug out tree stumps and cleared on the east bank, hired a bulldozer to grade the bank, seeded, fertilized and mulched the previously unmowable area. This spring the new grass is coming in nicely.

On 8-13-07 our work party reset head stones and foot stones in the cemetery. We also located a boundary line for the recently approved 20’ right of way to the cemetery from the MTHS. On 8-22-07 we located a survey pin representing an important corner of the ROW. On 9-6-07 a surveyor put a pin on the southwest corner of the ROW. On 9-14-07 MTHS President Justine Hommel was authorized to sign the deed granting the ROW to the Haines Family Association. On 9-19-07 the Town of Hunter dumped the first load of fill to be used on the ROW. On 9-26-07 Tony Bucca completed the ROW deed, MTHS President Justine Hommel signed it, and on 9-27-07 it was recorded at the County Clerk’s Office. The reason for this new and improved ROW is because the original ROW has been partially blocked and is no longer practical to use. It continues to be a work in progress, dependent upon volunteer labor, fill, bulldozing, and a new curb cut application, etc.

Peter B. Haines Cemetery:  A future project.

More good news: the Haines Family Association now has its own web site, thanks to Sandy Palmer, who volunteered to create and maintain one for us. It was just recently started and will be a work in progress for some time.  As time goes by we will be making thoughtful additions to it.  Please send your submissions, preferably as a Word e-mail attachment or on a CD. At present we do not have the ability to scan. For items submitted that are not put on our web site, they may be scanned into a database by Sue Haines for future reference and research. Please do not send originals.

Layman Burying Ground:
On 6-12-08 our HFA work party continued the good work done by Sal and Carol Centamore, HFA members and new adjoining owners, who had already begun clearing and cleaning up this cemetery earlier this spring. We worked for five hours and enlarged the improved area and continued clearing the access ROW by cutting down obstructing trees, digging out stumps, and we began grading the ROW to the cemetery with a backhoe. It is a work in progress, another cemetery that was hidden in the woods for scores of years, which we rescued and are slowly restoring. It’s difficult to build a road through the woods with modern machinery. Imagine what it was like for our ancestors, who did it by hand or with the aid of animals, and had to remove even bigger trees and stumps.

As a fringe benefit of our work party, when raking leaves in the  area of the three headstones we repaired last year, two more stone monuments were located in line with the original three, for a total of six now, including a very small headstone some distance from the others. The two newly-discovered stones are plain bluestone about a foot wide and four inches high with no inscriptions on them.

In addition to our work rescuing, restoring and maintaining the mountaintop cemeteries in our care, Haines Family Association member volunteers have maintained and cared for the Mountain Top Historical Society’s 20.3 acre grounds for the past 13 years and continue to do so. Our present crew is made up of Bob Van Dyke, Sal Centamore, Robert Haines and Dick Haines.

Reunion: During this year’s reunion, we would like to involve the children in learning about their family through crafts. We will have some supplies available for the children who along with their parents, grandparents and aunts and uncles, can color, write and create “family trees.” We ask that if you want to participate, please bring along a few family pictures (NO ORIGINALS) that can be cut down to a 3x2 size. Also bring along names and birth dates of as many family members as you are aware of. We hope this will be a fun project for everyone who gets involved. If you have crayons, stickers, markers, etc., that you would like to share, bring them.

Another enjoyable activity planned for our reunion, open to all, is storytelling about our ancestors, a wonderful and entertaining opportunity to share our past with our children and each other, giving meaning to the present, who we are and how we got here.

On 5-29-08 our Finance Committee met and established a 2008-9 budget. Copies are available.

As you can see from the enclosed Treasurer’s report, the cemetery portion of our treasury was seriously depleted by our ambitious improvements to the Aaron Haines Cemetery and ROW. If you approve of our efforts and would like to continue to support this activity, which is one of our mission-statement purposes, check the CEMETERY box and/or write “Cemetery” on your check. The first $5 goes toward your membership dues. Our work party participants donate their time, tools, machinery, gas, diesel, backhoe, etc., at no expense to the membership.

On May 31st vice-president Bill Haines and his wife Gail hosted a cemetery restoration seminar on behalf of the HFA in Walton, NY. Apparently it was such a success that Bill has already been contacted to do another one in that area in the future.

For the public good and to help our communities, the Finance Committee recommends that we make a donation or donations annually to charity. Your input will be welcomed at the reunion or by phone or e-mail.

In closing, a reminder or two. Your dues and donations to the HFA are now tax deductible to the extent allowed by law. Mark your envelope/check “cemetery” if you wish to help replenish our cemetery fund. If you need a place to stay, visit www.GreeneTourism.com or www.travelerdiscountguide.com for the Northeast.

In addition to the new children’s activities and storytelling, we will be taking a group picture for the newspapers, enjoying the fresh mountain air, renewing old acquaintances, making new friends, providing a sharing table for your favorite dish, holding our usual baking contest with awards for different categories, awards for largest family group, patriarch, matriarch, youngest boy, youngest girl, and farthest traveled, sharing genealogical research and old photos, memorabilia and collections of all kinds. There will be 2008 mugs for sale and perhaps a few T-shirts and caps. Freebees may include pens and letter slitters.

See you at the Dedication at 10:00 a.m. or at the Reunion thereafter.

My Best Regards,
Richard E. “Cousin Dick” Haines
President, Haines Family Association