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

Annual Family Gathering

My Irish cousins came together this past weekend for our 5^th annual gathering. We are a small handful of Coyle/Brady cousins who originally discovered each other on the internet. Our beginnings can be traced to the 1800s in County Cavan, Ireland where our Coyle/Brady ancestors made a meager living in small rural towns near Lough Sheelin. We’ve come a long way since then. We cousins all live in the northeast: New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Each summer we take turns with the hosting and driving.

This year we gathered on the Jersey shore. Besides sharing our newest genealogy discoveries we enjoyed delicious seafood meals, views of sailboats drifting on the water at the blue hour, and a night sky full of stars and fireworks.

Our little group is growing. Another Connecticut cousin has recently joined us. We’ve pulled out our family trees to determine where this branch connects.

This autumn we are planning to gather for our first research weekend. Family group sheets, timelines and laptops in hand, we will head to a Connecticut library [CT is where the Patrick & Margaret (Brady) Coyle family lived.] to expand our family knowledge.

Don’t wait. Grab your calendar and gather your cousins. You’ll be glad you did.

Related Posts:

• Counting Cousins
• Our 6th Irish Cousin Gathering
• An Expanding Family Gathering

An Expanding Family Gathering

top: Pat & Colleen; Middle: Tara & Lisabeth; botton: Marcia & Lucille

Many people are intimidated by the thought of family reunions. They visualized scores of people and a logistical tangle. You can however, think small and have a successful gathering with plenty of time to talk, share and enjoy each other.

This weekend was our annual connection with our Coyle Cousins. In 2008 we met for a long afternoon in Waterbury, Connecticut, the home of our mutual ancestors, Patrick & Margaret (Brady) Coyle. We talked for hours in an Olive Garden and realized we needed more time to connect. In 2009 we spent a weekend at Pat’s waterfront home in New Jersey. Besides comparing family trees we enjoyed the water, shopped for antiques and discovered many things we have in common (like freckles!). In 2010 the cousins came to my house in New York State. We expanded from Pat Brady, Tara (Herbert) Cousins and myself to include a newly found cousin, Lisabeth Timothy and her family. A BBQ and a boat ride on the Hudson River were fun components of the weekend. 

This year we were in Massachusetts at Tara’s & Ashley’s marvelous house. We had a beautiful Saturday for our visit to the Minuteman National Historic Park in Concord and a stop at a farm stand for the best corn on the cob ever. Despite all the pampering by Tara & Ashley the best part of the weekend was meeting even more family members! Lisabeth brought along her delightful parents, Charles & Lucille (Coyle) Timothy. Lucille greeted me by reaching out and touching my face and saying, "I know that face. You are a Coyle!" Lucille brought along photos & stories to share. A surprise guest was Tara’s sister, Marcia Cass Herbert, who came over from Cape Cod to meet more family. We took a tip from old photos we were looking at and gathered on a set of steps for a fun photo.

Home again, I am anxious to analyze all the new family information I now have. I look forward to next year’s gathering! Maybe we can discover more cousins to join us then.


Related Posts:

Our 6th Irish Cousin Gathering
Annual Family Gathering