Family Reunions

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I have seen a thread with this same title but it was started in 2004, so I thought I would start over.

Do any of your family names have regular reunions? When I was a child my mother’s side of the family had two, one for her fathers family and one for her mothers. The latter is not held anymore, but my maternal grandmother’s family still has a reunion once a year. I look forward to it, and the family tree information is well kept up by my sister, who is really into our genealogy. She also still keeps up info on the history of our ancestors that the materal grandmother comes from. We liked telling folks this year that one many greats grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War. That was the guy who got courtmartialed. but since the sentence was commuted my aunt had all the documentation to get into the DAR. I told people a year or two ago at the reunion that I saw a woman on a PBS shoe that had Grandma’s family name, I managed to track her down at the University of North Carolina. It was her married name but she put me in contact with her husband who was into their history and it turned out we are related, albeit VERY distantly. The first of the name came to the colonies in 1722 and he and his wife had a bunch of kids and their kids had lots of kids and so on. I am descended from one son of the original couple and this guy in NC from another. We worked it out that we are seventh cousins once removed.

This weekend my sister and aunt are going to a reunion for a family whose name is in one of our lines. The name is that of a woman who would be a great great grandmother of ours.We are aware of the family and they know about us, and one time a woman called to talk genealogy. I will be very interested in any good stories they bring back.

Does your family keep in contact through reunions? We are in Kansas.

2

We have a reunion with my father’s side of the family every two years, except for the COVID year. Usually near a beach.

It used to consist of 23 people, but some have died and some have had new children, so I think next year we’re expecting about 15.

3

The descendants of my great-great-grandparents (born in the 1870s) meet annually. The number of people involved is now enormous, as they had nine children.

4

No, have never been to a family reunion or heard of one being organized on either side of my family, or my partner’s. I don’t think I even met all of my father’s 6 siblings, and wouldn’t know how to find my cousins apart from one who got in touch a few years ago and whose email I might have somewhere. If, mirabile dictu, someone organized one, I would decline the invitation. Don’t do high school reunions either.

5

My father was the oldest of 7 children, and there are 21 kids in my generation. When Grandma died in 1977, it was the first time the family had all been together in several years. My 3 aunts decided then that we should get together every two years. And we have done just that, with just a couple of exceptions, covid being one of them.

Not everybody makes it to every reunion, but it’s pretty well attended. There is now just one surviving brother (he’s 96), but my generation and the next do a great job of keeping the reunion alive. We’ve been all over the country, but we’ve settled on Spokane the last couple of reunions, as my (rich) cousin with a big house is willing to host the gathering. There were about 40 attendees last summer.

It’s a great tradition.

6

I’m one of about 25 first cousins on my mom’s side. My mom is the only one left her her generation, and a few of my generation are gone, too. We have tried to have family reunions about every five years, but we are scattered all over the US, and the further we get from the grandparents’ generation, the weaker the bonds are. We’re due for one, but amongst my cousins we can’t seem to agree what family is responsible for the next one.

My generation grew up pretty close and we were all up in each others’ business right up to the time the first of my generation started to become grandparents. My wife is the family genealogist, so we are able to keep track of expansions and contractions in the family tree backed up by some pretty solid paper trails. We also have an unsubstantiated family tree that goes back to the 12 century.

7

My maternal grandfather’s family meets each year in one of three places, with it rotating around so all the branches get it close. But as we are all within forty miles of each other it is not bad. The three branches come from three brothers and their descendants, This started when I was in kindergarten so I thought it had gone on forever. Now I am in the second oldest generation. When my aunt, my mother’s sister dies I will be the oldest in our branch of the family.

8

Do you mean reunions amongst families that actually know each other, such as cousins, or do you mean people meeting up with people they don’t know except for being traced through a family tree because of their surname?

9

Various branches of my family have had them sporadically. Some have been “well organized,” but often it’s just some cousins saying “We’re going to get together at [whatever place at whatever time], and whoever wants to join us, come on!”

10

My mother’s family has been having one or two a year since at least 2011 ( there were sporadic ones before). The one that is still going on every year is a weekend at an old-fashioned Catskill resort and the one that has been suspended was a “bring your own food” outing at a racetrack. It’s mostly people who know each other , although my kids don’t really know my mother’s cousins apart from this reunion.

11

I had 35 first cousins on the Mercotan side (and none on my mom’s side) and though a few have passed, there’s still a huge number of us still kicking. One of the more ambitious (and competent) cousins started planning a reunion (of which we’ve had maybe 3 in the last 3 decades) and was doing a marvelous job of it by finding a not overly expensive venue which was also centrally located.

But then her idiot brother publicly posted on the reunion facebook page that he was unhappy with the cost for each of us (something like $35) and why couldn’t she find a cheaper place or make the food herself and have it at the local town hall? Another of the dumber cousins chimed in, agreeing with the brother. Our planner of course told them they were now in charge of the reunion, and please let the rest of us know where and when it would be once they set it up. So of course there’s now no reunion.

It’s our classic extended family dynamic: Someone goes out of their way to do something positive, nice, and productive. Then others swoop in to tear them and their project down.

12

I mean the organized, (more or less) reunions based on a family name. Of course if they are held regularly by the third generation not all of the attendees have the name, but it’s still fun to catch u with extended family. Like I said in the OP my sister will be going to a gathering where the closest relatives will be third cousins or so. A great-great-grandmother had this name. Sis has done tremendous work in organizing what we know about our ancestors. But it was me who looked this guy up, even before there were computers or the internet. He would be a third cousin five times removed, and descended from the couple who first came the colonies by one son, me from another son.

13

My maternal grandfather had 7 siblings, and so my mom had lots of cousins. In the early 80s, they started getting together every other year on the shore of Lake Erie, near where the family first settled in 1823 (literally, where the wagon wheel broke).

My first time was in 1986, and we’ve made it to most of them over time. It is a much-anticipated event for everyone - I now have good relationships with a bunch of second cousins that I would never have known otherwise (I think Facebook helped with maintaining contact with distant cousins).

We come from all over the country for 3 days of basically just hanging out, drinking beer and swimming/waterskiing. Normally it is in June, but this year, we had to move it to mid-August, which has impacted attendance as a lot of the younger families now have HS and College students that have more pressing obligations, as mine all did when they were that age.

As one of the eldest cousins on the next tier down, I started coming as a recent college grad (I was not enthused at the time) and now am leading the organization of the event. My folks, sibs and their kids and now spouses will be there, which is nice in itself. Overall, we’ll have a relatively small turnout of about 65 people this year, but have had up to 120.

I think it works because we’re not all that close on a daily basis, and don’t see each other that often. We also do it at a central location so no one person is burdened as the host. We all pitch in with tasks like room assignments, meal clean up and everyone is pretty good natured about it, and makes an effort to be there.

One of our cousins’ husband did some genealogy and discovered that instead of being German, as we had thought, the guy in 1823 gave up his allegiance to the king of France, as he had come from Alsace, which was French territory at the time. But looking further, it seems like his ancestors moved to Alsace from Switzerland, to repopulate the area after one of the many wars.

On my Dad’s, Boston Irish side - such an event is inconceivable, for all the reasons that others have cited for not doing reunions above. I feel really fortunate for having this experience and am looking forward to the trip.

However, every year, we worry that the place we stay (an old-school lakeside hotel) will close - the owners are really old, and the property is really valuable. So we’ll see if the tradition continues.

14

The ancestor and his wife who first came here in 1722 had eight children and the youngest, a daughter, died at 13 in 1735, So her mother had her just before they family saild and she had to make a long and ugly voyage with a newborn, or she was very pregnant and still had to ride herd on seven kids. There were four boys and I came down from one, the guy above from another, and the gentleman I mentioned in the OP from yet another son. The family was not Irish but had lived there for a generation or so after leaving France and the Protestant persecutions. That’s why my ancestor was courtmaitialed, he wouldn’t fight with the Catholics that Lafayette brought to fight.

On my father;s side we had a family name, my own actually, who sometimes were French and sometimes were German, depending on where territorial lines fell and who won what war. Most often German, Maybe some of my great greats knew yours, as they were from Alsace too,

15

My family never had a formal reunion, just a seasonal mini-reunion. Every Thanksgiving, we gathered as much of the family as could come to my grandmother’s house, and every Christmas, we were at my grandmother’s sister’s place. Since both husband and wife were piano teachers, and they had twin grand pianos in one room, I got to play a grand. And one uncle always wanted to engage me in a chess game. One year we were visited by some family members who were doctors and missionaries in China at the time, and it was quite a treat when they gave all the kids Chinese coins. In those days, the coins had holes in the middle so you could string them.

16

My family name is made up so that’s not happening. A few years ago we found out my grandfather decided to change his name around 1915. I may have some relatives with the original name but I don’t know who they are.

17

When I was a kid there was a yearly family reunion at a park. First generation was the cousins. They hung out in the pavilion and talked. For me, it was find kids who were my age and hung out with them. They were strangers.

When the first generation started dying out, so did the reunion.

18

My mother was born into a large family of 12 living children. We have always had family reunions. Every so often we have the reunion in Canada as that is where my great uncle ended up when the family immigrated from Belgium years ago.

Apart from these reunions I maintain a close relationship with about 10 first cousins. They are more than cousins but not quite siblings. I call them my cuzisters and cubrothers :joy:. We have frequent gatherings including an end of summer picnic in Virginia at the end of August.

19

My great-grandparents were all born in Europe (as well as one of my grandmothers), so the only reunions I’ve attended in Canada have not had any particularly distant relatives attend.

Only my father’s side is interested in meeting and only sporadically (e.g. on my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary, the 100th anniversary of their farm, and a few years ago because my father and his siblings are getting pretty old).

20

I am mostly of German or central European ancestry but only one of my great grandparents was born in Europe. He came over at sixteen and thankfully already had a brother here to go to. He was about to be drafted and didn’t feel like being cannon fodder for when Bismarck was busy unifying the Germanies.