California Wine Country will be the setting for the October reunion featuring Napa Valley and Sonoma—including historical aspects, and of course, vineyard visits and wine tastings. Due to the desirability of this destination, particularly during harvest season known as "crush," it's important for attendees to secure their reservations as soon as possible.

Our chief planner, Liz Kane is being ably assisted by a cadre of her California Van Sant cousins—and fellow descendants of Alonzo Vansant. The photo of the group shown below was taken in 2008 at a meeting of the Dixon Historical Society when a report was presented about Alonzo Monroe Vansant and his wife, Euphemia Effie Woodington—the group’s pioneer ancestors who settled in California in the 1870s.

Alonzo was the great-great-great grandson of Gerret Stoffelse van Sand. Born in Bensalem, Bucks County, PA on October 10, 1800 to Abraham and Mary (Singley) Vansant, Alonzo headed westward about 1837 and settled in Richland Township, Jones County, Iowa for more than three decades before pushing farther west to follow his adult children in 1874 to settle in Solano County, California.

Several of Alonzo and Effie’s descendants maintain close contact and they stand ready to serve as hosts to Van Zandt Society members from far and wide who will attend the reunion.