Annual Meeting

The theme at the annual meeting this year was “Ancestors.” We encouraged people to bring food items that reminded them of an ancestor. These foods included Portuguese-style linguica stuffed quahogs (in memory of grandparents who came from Sao Miguel in the Azores), Mince-n-Tatties (a hearty dish made in the northeast of Scotland, made on cold, winter days.), bean salad (a mother’s recipe), and chocolate chip cookies (a late father’s recipe).

Click below to catch up on some of the fun that was shared between meeting business:

• My great grandmother was married in 1912. I wore her dress exactly 80 years (1992) later when I got married.
• Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (b.1864) was a cousin of my father and an artist. My father was born in Paris in 1929.
• Great Aunt Effie – letter writer extraordinaire!
• My dad, Steve, fought at the Battle of Iwo Jima and made it back alive!
• I’m related to Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island!
• My great, great Uncle James Clarence Morgan, was the poet laureate of Ireland with a statue on St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin.
• My grandfather, who moved the family from Ceretta, Italy to New Haven, Connecticut.
  Auntie Bea – best apple pie!
• My cousin, Muriel, in Nova Scotia, Canada, sweetest, kindest person I know.

• There are so many spellings of my name. My mother chose this one because looked the best in her penmanship.
• I was named to keep up a maternal family tradition that the first-born girl’s name starts with an L. This goes back 5 generations!
• My married name was changed by my husband’s paternal grandfather. It was Cohen until he purchased a toy store in NYC and changed it to match the name of the store.
• I was named after my great, great grandmother.
• My name is accidentally a combination of my parent’s middle names.
• My name means “she who must be loved” in Latin.
• My name means “pretty.”
• My married last name was changed by my husband’s grandfather. He added an “s” at the end.
• I got my name from my mama.
• My favorite meanings of my name depending on language: earth, archer, beginning, and unbreakable spirit
• I’m related to a general in Napoleon’s army, and my maiden name is inscribed in the L’Arc de Triomphe.
• I just got the default most popular name for girls in the 1970s.
• We’ve been correcting the pronunciation of our last name for 300 years in America.