Our 6th Irish Cousin Gathering

Since our initial meeting in August 2009 

when three of us met for a weekend in 

New Jersey we Irish cousins have enjoyed coming together. This year we met in New Haven County, Connecticut, home of our shared ancestors, Thomas Brady & Catherine Gibney. As always our time together was filled with laughter, sharing and revelations.

Friday was the day for research. I drove from my home in rural New York to Derby, CT. It was a beautiful day for the drive with occasional trees that had turned bright red and amazing orange and a blue sky that stretched forever. I headed to the Derby City Hall clerk’s office. I had done by research in advance and was fairly certain they had the birth, marriage & death records there. It turned out to be a treasure trove! The clerks were friendly & helpful. The records were in great shape & were clearly indexed. My cousin, Pat who had driven up from New Jersey, met me there later and we were both kept busy for hours. I will detail our findings in another post.

When we finished in the city hall we went up Elizabeth Street to the Derby PublicLibrary, a great old stone building. We poured over city directories there, quickly recording the movements of our family till the building closed.

Saturday was our day for fun. Maureen, one of our Ct cousins had a delicious brunch for us at her home in Milford. As we gathered there more and more cousins arrived. Tara drove down from her home in MA. Lisa came from Moodus, CT. We reunited with those we have met in previous years and met new relatives. I had prepared a chart that shows how we are linked to Thomas Brady & Catherine Gibney which helped us all understand how we are related to each other. It a pretty simple excel sheet that certainly helps me keep our relationships straight in my mind. Pat and I shared some of our research findings. As we ate muffins, eggs and fruit Maureen made copies of documents. She gave us each a gift, a photo CD of her branch of the family! Conversations flew around Maureen’s charming house. Before leaving the house we posed for our annual cousin photo, this year taken by Dan amid much laughter.

Eventually we loaded ourselves in cars and headed to New Haven. We went to a chocolate

& wine tasting, had a little walk and visited Yale University Art Museum. Our last stop Kelly’s Irish Pub on Crown Street for dinner. Over a dozen of us shared a great meal. There was lots of conversation around the big table. We always delight in discovering how much we all have in common. Our evening ended with a birthday cake for the four year old twin cousins.

We keep in touch all year with emails, Christmas cards and facebook messages. Who knows what we will do next year.

[Watch for posts detailing the research we did that weekend.]

Related Posts:

An Expanding Family Gathering
Counting Cousins

Annual Family Gathering

Cousins Connect