The Rucker Family Society has met every other year since 1988 for a national reunion and to conduct Society business. The emphasis of the meetings is learning about the host city's Rucker history, and the weekend can fairly be described as a "Rucker field trip." Early reunions were held in Virginia, since Peter Rucker was an immigrant to that colony, and so much of the Rucker history is to be found there. The Society is national in scope, however, and reunions now alternate between Virginia and other states. We have met in Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri and Utah. We will return to Nashville, Tn the weekend of October 16, 2010. Society members in our host cities arrange lectures, tours of historic homes, cemetery visits, museum time, and fine dining with friends old and new. There is no better way to learn about an area and its Rucker ties.
Our 2004 Virginia reunion was held at the nexus of the early Rucker family history, and featured Lynchburg's Batteau Festival. We visited historic Rucker homesites, and toured museums and family graveyards. Sweet Briar College was the setting for many of our lectures and programs, which ran the gamut from the scholarly to the light-hearted.
The 2006 Salt Lake City reunion capitalized on the genealogic research resources of the downtown's LDS Family History Library. City and regional tours exhibited the area's Winter Olympics legacy, posh ski resorts, the world's biggest open pit copper mine, historic homes and modern universities, and the convention center, where we attended a live radio broadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and orchestra.
Our Kansas City reunion celebrated the westward migration of the Rucker family, symbolized by the wagon wheel ruts visible on our tour of the Santa Fe, Oregon and California trails. The Harry Truman home and Presidential Library, beautiful river towns and old cemeteries, and a tour of the collection of the excavated cargo of the steamboat Arabia were a few of the highlights.
Our June, 2008 reunion in Charlottesville, Virginia included tours of the historic homes of three of our founding fathers: Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, James Monroe's Ashlawn-HIghland and John Madison's Montpelier. We toured the University's Rotunda and Lawn, and its exhibits of the Declaration of Independance and historic maps. The observatory was ours exclusively for an evening of stargazing through its 125 year-old telescope. We toured Ruckersville, and visited some of its many antique stores. Our Sunday speaker introduced us to the newly indexed account books of Lynchburg's Diuguid funeral home, a great source of genealogical information for Rucker research in Amherst County.
2010 Reunion in Nashville, Tn. Thursday, October 14 to Sunday, October 17. Our host hotel is the Holiday Inn Opryland/Airport. Here is the web site to reserve guest rooms at the hotel, which will get you the special rate:
When you get to the web site, click on "Check Availability"
Ignore the "Log In" section of the web site.
Please use this web site to make your Nashville room reservations at the host hotel. If you make them by phone, be sure to ask for rooms from the block reserved for our 2010 Rucker Family Society reunion:
telephone 615-883-9770
Make your travel plans, now, to join your Rucker cousins in "Music City, USA."
