If you simply skimmed the names of the roughly 125 people who gathered at the Park County Fairgrounds on Saturday, you’d be forgiven for failing to find the connection between the Whitlocks, Faxons, Randalls, Gilmores, Walshes and others.

But if you traced each attendee’s heritage back far enough, you’d find an Anderson or a Sheets in every family tree. In fact, all of those gathered could boast some tie to early Garland area homesteaders Charles and Maggie Sheets and Hulda and Adolph Anderson.

Both families came to the Powell Valley in 1909 — the Sheets traveling from Missouri and the Andersons arriving from Illinois.

Today, their descendants have spread across the country. Those who attended Saturday’s Anderson-Sheets family reunion traveled practically from coast-to-coast, coming from places that included California, Virginia, Colorado, Washington, Idaho, Montana and other parts of Wyoming.

But there were also plenty of Anderson-Sheets family members who — now some six generations later — continue to live in the Powell area.

Darrell Anderson still lives in a portion of the home built by Adolph and Hulda, his grandparents, while his sister Janie (Anderson) Faxon lives on the other side of the homestead. From the Andersons to the Faxons, the family has been living on and farming the land for five generations.

“There aren’t too many [local homesteads] that are still in the family,” Janie Faxon said.

The Anderson farm could easily have been lost a century ago, following Adolph’s untimely death in 1920. However, Hulda (Carlson) Anderson opened a boarding house in Powell to support herself and their two children, Helen and Raymond.

“Her fine culinary ability gave her a reputation that kept her busy and enabled her to keep the farm,” Tribune writer Becky Hays would later report.

Raymond Anderson went on to marry Ethel Mae Sheets (the daughter of Charles and Maggie), forever binding together the two Powell homesteading families. Although the couple couldn’t have known it at the time, their union also laid the groundwork for Saturday’s Anderson-Sheets reunion.

Fitting for a family with deep roots in the area, last weekend’s reunion grew from a conversation at last year’s Park County Fair, when Brenda Gilmore — who is Adolph and Hulda’s great-granddaughter — secured permission from her family members to organize the event.

“OK, I’m doing it,” she recalls saying at the time. “And we did it.”

The gathering, appropriately based out of the fairgrounds’ Homesteader Hall, featured activities ranging from an all-family fun run to music. Pianist Lloyd Sheets — who’s Charles and Maggie Sheets’ grandson — and his wife Hope were among those to entertain the family members.

Of course, the Anderson-Sheets clan is large enough that there were multiple musical performers lined up for the afternoon; as soon as the Sheets were finished, a band of Faxons hopped on stage.

Family members hope to organize another reunion in two years.