The following history is from my own memory. If I have misremembered
something please contact me with your corrections. Annes, History webminister.
Chapter 1-The Beginning
Our History begins long ago in 1990. A small group of people in the northwestern
area of Harris county truly enjoyed playing in the Barony of the Stargate. However, most of the activities of the time were
deep in the heart or southern part of the Barony. The people in the north had gotten tired of driving so far away and some
had small children which made traveling difficult.
So they met and discussed forming a new group which would be a Canton
of the Barony of the Stargate so as to cut down on the travels they endured in order to play in the Society. The people who
met were Alanna of DownPatrick; Barrett of DownPatrick; Fenris of Twycross; Fedelm ni Uidhir; Talmon Wilbanks of Twyce Holey
Wood; Adelicia Brabent and Patrick of Kilkenny. At this meeting, they decided on a name for the new group which they called
Fyreamptewealde. This is Welch for "Fire Ant Meadow" due to the real problem that year with our local fire ants.
There were a number of other meetings as the little group tried to get
off the ground during the next year. They did achive incipient status but made little progress otherwise. They did hold an
off calendar picnic which drew a goodly number of folks at Spring Creek park in Tomball, TX. But the storm clouds were beginning
to gather...
Shortly thereafter, Alanna of Downpatrick suddenly stepped down as seneschal and
the office defaulted to the hospitalier at the time...who happened to be me. Please keep in mind that I was about 6 months
into being a member of the Society at this time.
The learning curve was steep. While I was very proud of our young group, I learned
that the canton was not in good favor with the Kingdom level officers. Everyone up the chain of command was very polite but
it was made very clear to me that the first order of business was to get our officer's reports up to date (yes, there was
paperwork even then). The second order of business was to get a **calendar** event onto the schedule and to carry it through.
The third order of business was to change the name of the group since the Kingdom Seneschal had been told by the Kingdom Herald
that our name was not a name that could be registered. I was given no doubt that if these 3 items were not taken care of,
and quickly, that our nacent and incipient canton would be ....to put it politely....dissolved.
Needless to say, we were hard pressed to get all this done. We had several emergency
meeting of both the officers and the populace. At the officer's meetings we all worked together to help each other get the
necessary paperwork done and turned in. At the populace meetings (which at the time were at Molly Malone's Pub) we discussed
alternate names such as Northgate (sounded like a development community) and Northern Marche, we finally settled on and voted
for Gatesedge...for we were still part of Stargate. We also liked the idea that we were on the "edge" of the Barony which
brought out the visualization of being at the front edge of things. Our herald of the time, Fedelm, started filling
out the paperwork to get our name passed and registered. Simultaneously, a number of the populace submitted designs for our
arms. The final design was the brainchild of Adelicia Brabent.
As for the first event, called Midsummer Faire, was held on the weekend of June
21, 1991. I was the autocrat as seneschal and I chose it for two reasons.
First, it was a clear date on the calendar with no conflicts. At the time, we were
not limited to just one event and the calendar was exceedingly full. There was no calendar secretary, no regions and lots
of groups.
The second was more personal. It was the weekend of my 39th birthday and I wanted
to celebrate in a big way.
