While some folk will do almost anything to avoid family get-togethers, the Dragoo Family descendants will do almost anything to hang out and talk with each other. Every other year since 1992 the Dragoo Family Association has hosted a family reunion. Mostly, we eat, attend presentations on family history and research, and visit the area of the host city (each reunion is held in a different city), but mostly we eat.
Inevitably, conversations twist their way around to our most notable family progenitor, Indian Billy Dragoo. Newcomers are sometimes fascinated by the varying stories shared among members. Years ago, the reunion was honored with the presence of several “old-timers” who were very well versed in the story. Dragoo descendants Maxine Fisher and Del Osborn, for example, had gathered boxes of information and had written details of William Dragoo’s capture by the Shawnee, as well as his return to his birth family as Indian Billy Dragoo. Unlike our pioneering family who abandoned rich family connections for hopes of a better life out west, the Ohio and West Virginian families anchored themselves to the ground of their ancestors, gathering artifacts and stories that have brought the family back together. Their efforts have contributed greatly to the legacy of Indian Billy in our family. Today, many Dragoo family members can without hesitation recite names, places, and dates of the events of Indian Billy’s life. Pictures are exchanged and even the tiniest scraps of information are passed from person to person and generation to generation.
For one line of our frolicking family, Indian Billy is a portal into re-membering and re-grounding ourselves in our family’s history and legacy.
Author and Dragoo Family Historian Vi Parsons, whose parents landed in California, represents the pioneering side of the family. Coming back to her roots, she has written “The Legendary Indian Billy”, relaying the life and legacy of a young boy, who through no forethought of his own, has become the lodestone for a family. His narrative is a way for us to identify our place in family history–a piece of solid ground in a rapidly changing world. This book, too, has joined the call for re-membering the thousands member strong family of Indian Billy Dragoo.
According to The Newark Advocate (Newark, Ohio), Published Sun. 25 Oct 1992, Page 20
The First Reunion of (Indian) Billy Dragoo was held at the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, North Fifth Street on Sept. 26. Those in attendance were: Marvin and Vickie Baker, Ken and Louise Sinclair, Rita Andrews, Minnie Andrews, Floyd McKenna, Mary E. Inman, Pearl Osborn, Janice Osborn, Bill and Pansy Queen, Ed, Joy, Charity and Jessica Phillips, Maxine Fisher, Ronnie, Judith, Tanya, and Casey Hewitt, Marie Wade, Vickie Wade, Barb Parish, Virginia McKnight, Mary Gentry, Joe Harbaugh, Charles and Lila Robison, Evelyn Osborn, Daryl Osborn, Wayne and Carol Van Sickle, Delbert and Peg Osborn, Meg Osborn, Morril Lucas, Ron and Roberta Lesko, John Bratton. Marvin was selected as next year’s chairman and Judith Hewitt as secretary.
*** Come frolic with the family! The next reunion will be held in 2026.
The 2024 reunion was held in Knoxville, TN, September 19-21.
For more information, on the reunion, visit the Dragoo Family Association website.