On Dec. 15, 1970 in Orrington, 87-year-old Clifford Kaye Hatfield penned a letter to his last surviving sibling among a family of 17 children.

“Dear Sister Helen,” he wrote, “Another year has rolled by and it is Christmas time again, and my thoughts go back to the old days in Arcadia when we were children, blessed by having the finest father and mother anyone was ever blessed with.”

Those parents were Abram and Margaret Hatfield of Arcadia, Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia. Abram’s line of North American Hatfields began with Matthias Hatfield, who had arrived in the New Haven Colony by 1660 and spent the rest of his life in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. Matthias’ great-great-grandson, Abraham Marsh Hatfield (1767-1851), was a Loyalist to Britain who, following the deaths of his parents days apart in 1774 and the end of the American Revolution, emigrated in 1783 with two brothers to Nova Scotia.

Abraham’s son Jacob, with wife Margaret, parented seven sea captain sons — among them Abram Marsh Hatfield (1829-1914), whose many voyages included five trips to Liverpool, England, between December 1862 and October 1864 — 100 years before the Beatles burst onto the scene there.

When not at sea, Abram sired many children, four with his first wife Louisa. They lost one child in 1861 and another in 1866, the same year Louisa died. Abram in 1869 married Margaret Reid Short in Lima, Peru. The daughter of sea captain John Short II of Bangor and Scotland-born Margaret Finney, Maggie spent much of her youth on her father’s ship, where Captain Short had hired a tutor to instruct her in languages and music while they traveled to ports all around the world.

A grand portrait from the early 1850s shows the elder Margaret, about 20 at the time, with the younger on her lap. Looking at the sweet face of Maggie, just a few years old, it’s sad to imagine the tragedies she endured with her own children the spring of 1878.

“Mrs. Margaret Reid Hatfield lost four of her children — one almost after the other from diphtheria,” cousin Abraham Hatfield wrote in his 1954 tome about Matthias’ descendants. “No sooner was one buried, than, coming home from the funeral the grieving mother found the other child dying.”

All told, five children died: Julian on March 30, Emma and Walter on April 6, Jessie on April 8, and Evelina on April 15.

“One of the boys fell off a stone wall,” Hatfield’s history added. “He did not want anyone to know he had cut and bruised his head so he pulled down his cap to hide the bleeding wound. A few days later he died.”

That was likely Harper Hatfield, age 8, in 1888. My grandmother, Kaye Hatfield Parsons, told me this and many other stories of her family when I was a child. It was my Nanny’s tales that largely engendered my interest in family history.

“There is no hurry, we have … plenty of time”

Cliff in 1970 continued his letter to Helen, his youngest sibling:

“I remember the Christmas dinners, the pictures of the trotting horses hanging on the dining-room walls, we all gathered around the table, Father at one end with the turkey and Harry Cook at the other end with the goose and Mother, God Bless her! saying ‘There is no hurry, we have plenty to eat and plenty of time to eat,’ and everybody so happy, what a pleasing memory.”

Cliff was one of the fortunate kids who made it out of childhood. Born in 1883 in the Arcadia family home, he married in 1901 and immediately moved to Maine to begin a 50-year career at Eastern Fine Paper, not far from his mother’s Bangor hometown. Maggie had hoped one of her children would return there.

Cliff retired as a supervisor and well-respected baseball coach and community leader, serving in the state House of Representatives from 1956-60. My grandmother grew up in his house in Orrington, near what is now Hatfield Road. Born in 1928, she told me how, during the Great Depression, she and her father spent Christmas mornings bringing presents to those less fortunate in the community before they’d open their own.

Despite the calamities that befell the Hatfields, some of the surviving children gained prominence. Paul was a member of Nova Scotia’s House of Commons and Senate. Alice was Yarmouth’s first female councilor in the province and the first president of the Nova Scotia Liberal Association.

Lloyd worked in the sales and promotion division of Thomas Edison’s company, later becoming its Canadian representative. When Lloyd’s father Abram was near death in 1914, Edison sent Lloyd a sympathetic telegram suggesting he take some time off work to attend to his family.

Upon his retirement, Cliff purchased a summer place back in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, which allowed him to be among his remaining siblings in their winter years. My mother, Cynthia, enjoyed traveling there on the Bluenose ferry in her youth in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and she loved playing by the beach and hearing her grandfather tell the old stories in his Walter Cronkite-like voice.

“Time passes on with the changes we must expect in this life …”

“Time passes on with the changes we must expect in this life, and now you and I are the only ones left of the once fine family,” Cliff continued in his letter to Helen, who still lived in Nova Scotia.

“It would be so nice if you could spend the Xmas with us, but I understand you dread the crossing,” Cliff added. “Perhaps you could fly up, if there is any way it would be so nice, we have plenty of room.”

His first wife Bessie had died in December 1909 from breast cancer, leaving Cliff with three children, just like his father Abram when his first wife had died. Helen, along with sister Eva, visited Cliff a few times in Maine during the following lonely year for moral support and to help with the kids. Cliff remarried in 1911, and my grandmother Kaye was one of his and Olive’s two children.

Nanny, as we grandkids called Kaye, adored Christmas. She and my grandfather, Bumpy, decorated their home in lights, cards and ornaments, and their neighborhood in Brewer was a classic illuminated holiday village. My parents and I spent a few Christmases there, and I loved how Nan turned on the Yuletide tunes first thing in the morning, preparatory to the presents being opened and the noontime deluge of aunts, uncles and cousins coming through the door amidst boisterous greetings.

Those were beautiful times, when our family was as one. We have splintered since then, due in part to deaths and people spreading out geographically like ripples in a pond. I imagine the same happened to the grand old family Cliff recalled to his sister.

Cliff died on Jan. 15, 1971, one month after he sent Helen that letter. I don’t believe she made that final trip.

Helen died exactly one year to the day later, a few weeks shy of 81. “She was the last member of a prominent family,” The Nova Scotia Light-Herald reported.

As Cliff’s coffin was about to be closed, his wife Olive stepped in and asked that a signet ring inscribed with his surname initial “H” be removed from his finger.

That’s the story Nan told when she gave me that ring after I graduated from high school. I’ve worn it almost ever since, for 25 years.

The holidays for me are bittersweet. They’re so busy that I can’t get around to enjoying them until they’re past. As Cliff missed his original family, I miss those who’ve passed me by, like Dad, Nan, Bump, and so many others.

But I’m grateful for my Mum, my wife Lauren, and my daughter Alaina. We’re a small family now, but we enjoy our gatherings and revere those no longer physically with us.

Oftentimes I’ll kiss Cliff’s ring and say a little prayer for these beloved folks.

Alex Lear edits the Sun Journal’s Opinion pages.