According to Toni Austin our Family Historian:
In 1977 Cora Lee (Alexander) Whitaker (wife of Andrew Whitaker), spearheaded the first Alexander and Anderson Family Reunion in South Carolina, the family’s home as of 1850. For many years she dreamed of bringing family members from across the nation back to their roots. They came by bus, cars, trains and planes. Most had left Camden years earlier and they came back under conditions much different from when they had left. To them this was a homecoming. But to many of their off spring, those born elsewhere, this represented a look in the past and a new adventure.
She along with cousins: Clifton (with wife Daisy Belton) Alexander, Frankey (Cooper) Hull, Eunice (Canty) Hatten, Ruth (Alexander) Cooper, Barbara (Anderson) Thompson , Mamie (Anderson) Richardson and Fannie (Stover) Furman held the first Alexander-Anderson Family Reunion in Camden, South Carolina. Cousins who deserve honorable mention: Sammy Alexander, Sylvia (Anderson) Drakeford, Helen Anderson, Della (Alexander) Anderson, Betsy (Alexander) Murphy, Bessie (Lewis) Alexander (Rev. Rosevelt Alexander’s mother) for their years of service.
Cora Lee, like many others of her generation, had retained much of the family history, a history unknown to most. Those elders with this historical knowledge secreted in their memory, were primarily the ones who had remained in Camden. Some family history had been passed on from generation to generation. It wasn’t a history that was recorded on paper or by a tape recorder. This was a history that was verbally shared between family members and at times whispered because of some less favorable accounts.
As family members gathered in Camden in 1977, very few understood why it was called the Alexander/Anderson family reunion. So, that first family reunion, held at the Holiday Inn in Camden, was one of curiosity. It involved the meeting of family members who were for the most part strangers to each other.
And just as diverse was their ages, complexion, education, occupations, life styles, religions, and yes, attitudes. The most compatible were the elderly, who knew each other or at least had been told of each other by their parents or their immediate ancestors. There were cousins, first, second and third generations that knew nothing of each other. These were the strangers, and like strangers among strangers, they congregated and associated at the reunion with those they came with or knew, seldom did they venture to meet and understand more about those strangers, known only as cousins.
For almost 48 years of the reunion’s existence, the family had met annually in different cities throughout the country. Over the years, new family members have joined the reunion, and just as many no longer attend, as a result of passing on or some other reasons. What has become obvious is that the Alexander/Anderson family is larger than most people realize, but it is still a family of strangers.
