Saturday morning, we had our meeting at the Hotel. The minutes will cover what we talked about. Here are some photos of the group.
Here we have the some of our newly elected, or re-elected, Higdon Family Association Officers for 2018: Janice J Higdon, Janice M Higdon, Bill R Higdon, Faye S Higdon, Charles P Higdon, Martha Tidwell, Charles A “Chuck” Higdon and Frank Mayfield.
During the meeting, one of our scholarship recipients and his family arrived. Here they are above with Faye Higdon and Frank Mayfield on the ends. On the left is Luke Mahaney, the recipient, his mother Theresa Mahaney, and her parents Agnes and Gerald N Higdon.
Alexandria, VA, where our most recent HFA meeting this last fall was held, is about a 45-minute drive from La Plata, MD, where Luke Mahaney attends the College of Southern Maryland in La Plata. In the 10 years that the Higdon Family Association has awarded these scholarships, Luke has been the only recipient of our HFA Scholarship Award to personally attend an HFA Annual Meeting Banquet. Since he lived about 45 minutes away by car, he could attend, and he decided to attend. Near the end of our banquet that night, Luke requested a chance to address our membership. When Luke spoke, he thanked us for the honor our HFA had bestowed on him. He made it clear that receiving our scholarship award was indeed an honor. However, the reason he wanted to speak was to also emphasize the other part. He worked part-time to help pay for his college expenses and those expenses relative to his income from jobs at a Starbucks and as a dog-walker were not substantial. As the honor was very welcome, so the money was also very welcome. Luke said the $2,000 scholarship award was a significant assist in helping to pay his college costs. While our HFA members were pleased with Luke and his family’s attendance, we were even more pleased that our scholarship awards provide both psychological and monetary assistance.
The family of Gerald N Higdon are direct descendants from John Higdon (b. 1657) & Millicent Bowling. They live about 5 minutes by car from historic St. Ignatius Parish, the oldest continuously-used English Catholic church & parish in the United States, and about 20 minutes by car from Historic St. Mary’s City, the earliest colonial capital, where John Higdon met with the Upper House of Maryland on 4 November 1682 at the trail of Jacob Young. John had acted as jailor for Jacob Young and presented his bills for running a temporary jail for Jacob Young at his home. John was duly reimbursed for his jail related expenses. At that time John was 25 old. This Gerald N Higdon branch of the Higdon Family did not migrate inland to either west North Carolina or central Kentucky. They still residing in the same two county area along the banks of the Potomac River where John & Millicent lived some 260 years earlier.
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