Giving my paternal grandmother her due, here’s a post about a recent reunion of descendants from her ancestral families.
The last post featured a journal entry by my paternal Welsh-Irish grandmother Mary Frances “Molly” (Owen) Charboneau about a 1934 Charboneau Reunion .
So what better time to write about this year’s reunion of descendants of her Dempsey and Owen ancestors?
Ancestral diaspora
My Grandma Charboneau moved to New York State’s Adirondack region from Baltimore, Md., after meeting my grandfather William Ray Charboneau during a summer stay in the North Country.
When they married in 1910 she put down new roots and raised her family in upstate New York. So our Charboneau branch was geographically removed from her large Owen-Dempsey family in Baltimore — a diaspora experienced by other branches of the extended family, too.
Dempsey-Owen Reunion reconnects Welsh and Irish cousins
Yet where there is a will to reconnect with family, there is always a way. That’s how the wonderful Owen-Dempsey Reunion drew more than 40 cousins to Maryland in July 2017 — some of them meeting one another for the first time.
The Owen Reunion of cousins descended from my great grandparents Elizabeth C. (Dempsey) and Francis Hugh “Pop” Owen — Grandma Charboneau’s parents — has been held every few years for some time. My late dad, Norm Charboneau, regularly attended with my mom Peg.
Meanwhile, Molly’s Canopy readers may recall that a Dempsey Cousins Family Research Team — descendants of my great-great grandfather William Patrick Dempsey and his first and second wife, including many Owen cousins — has been connecting and researching together since 2015.
A landmark event
“What about inviting the Dempsey cousins to this year’s Owen Reunion?” asked cousin Dorene. Cousins Mary and Diane, the reunion organizers, enthusiastically agreed. So that’s what happened — and the group photo captures the landmark event!
Everyone was thrilled to meet their new cousins and reunite with family branches long separated by time and circumstance — and the genealogists and family historians in the group were gratified to find one another and compare notes.
Alas, not all the cousins could make it — so mini-reunions are a possibility for the future. Meanwhile, I can’t help but think how pleased my dad and grandmother would be to see so many branches of their ancestral Dempsey and Owen families uniting once again.
© 2017 Molly Charboneau. All rights reserved.