Annette (Wardlaw) Pederson and Sandra (Wardlaw) Walters helped staff the Clan Maxwell tent at this year’s Plesanton Games, greeting dozens of Maxwells and allied family members who dropped by throughout the weekend. 

It was typical Pleasanton weather for this year’s games — hot and hotter. The bad news was that most of the weekend was hot and uncomfortable, but the good news was that the hot weather seemed to bring out lots of visitors. When the weather is comfortable for wearing wool, few visitors seem to show up.

The Maxwell tent greeted dozens of visitors through the weekend — about half Maxwell descendents, about a third were Wardlaw descendents, and the occasional Dinwiddie, Kirk, Kirkland, Lawson, Pollock and Rawlins. There were even had a couple young Maxwells who came down from Canada with the weekend performance groups.

Doris Maxwell was up from Los Angeles with her daughter, who had a clothing booth in one of the vendor buildings. She alternated between helping at her Daughter’s shop and at our Maxwell tent Doris promoted the Maxwell DNA study to each Maxwell descendent who came by while she was at the tent. One of her converts was regular visitor Leo Maxwell, who brought me a published volume of the history of his branch of the Maxwell family a couple years back. If anyone matches DNA with Leo, they will link into a lot of documented Maxwell history. Leo’s family data has also been entered into the database at the Mormon Church.

In addition to Doris and Leo helping at the tent, two of the Wardlaws spent a lot of time helping out. Annette (Wardlaw) Pederson helped off and on all weekend and brought snacks on Sunday. Sandra (Wardlaw) Walters and her family helped most of Saturday. The other Wardlaw families who came by were Lorraine (Wardlaw) Kalajakis and Gina (Wardlaw) Pettinger with her family. Each of these cousins initially contacted each other via the Maxwell tent and most have now met each other.

The Maxwell tent was in a different spot this year, but visitors appeared able to find it. We were situated between Elliot and Sinclair. Sinclair was this year’s honored clan and had their chief in attendance – the Earl of Caithness. He discusseed attending local games events in Scotland after his last visit to Pleasanton about 5 years ago and said the Scottish locals were reluctant to believe that 60,000 West Coast colonials would show up to watch Scottish games, but he convinced them with pictures.

— Al Reeder