Ardee to be centre of US family reunion
The family of a returned emigrant who left his impoverished Co Mayo, Ireland, for the United States in the 1890s –joining his four homesick brothers working along the Erie Canal, only to later defy the odds–will proudly gather in Ireland from around the world this summer. The descendants and relatives will pay tribute to the late David Brennan and his beloved wife, Ann (Annie Bán), and the couple’s 12 children, all now departed, of Drumkeen, Claremorris, Co Mayo. Special gatherings will be hosted in Ardee and Dundalk, Co Louth, July 12 and July 13, and informally afterwards in Claremorris.
“We are very excited to welcome so many extended family from all over Ireland, and the rest of the world, including the United States, Canada, the UK and Europe, for our much anticipated two-day gathering in Ardee and Dundalk, where many of our family now proudly call home,” said David Brennan, grandson of Ann and David Brennan. David is also the son of the late Bridie and Martin Brennan–one of the 12 Drumkeen siblings– who relocated from Co Mayo, and settled with their family in the early 1950s, farming near Ardee, on land in Pepperstown now farmed by the next generation of Brennans.
This Brennan Family Reunion, harkening back to Ireland’s famous 2013 Gathering, may well be one of the largest multi-generational, family get-togethers this summer, according to experts. Many ancestral families convened reunions in Ireland for the Gathering in 2013, a national initiative primarily spearheaded by Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland.
The Spirit of Ireland’s Gathering
As of writing, more than 100 Brennan family members from home and aboard are expected. Many will be meeting for the first time. Nearly 30 alone are flying in from the US, many from the UK and Europe, with dozens more from around the globe pending confirmations.
They include many family members of Thomas (Tommy) Brennan, Portland, Oregon, and John (Jack) Brennan, two of the 12 siblings from Drumkeen, who like their father before them, emigrated to the US. Tommy and Jack stayed, raising their families in these US cities.
“A warm reception is assured for our visiting family,” said David Brennan of Ardee, managing director of Ardee Sports Company, Ireland’s largest supplier of sporting firearms and ammunitions.
There is much fascinating history shared by his extended family. David’s late paternal grandfather would return alone to Mayo, a US citizen, around the early 1900s, and later marry the former Ann Walsh. And despite the tough economic conditions facing them, the couple succeeded in building a life for their family on the 30 acres David came back to farm.
The Brennan siblings of Drumkeen were close knit. In the pre-social media days, the family were in regular contact by mail and phone, and visited each other often, even as many made new lives in foreign lands– some in the UK as well, of course, as in the US–and in Ireland. Until her dying breath, Annie Bán (prounounced bawn) was often the center of much well-deserved family attention.
The last of the Drumkeen siblings, Bridie Byrne (nee Brennan), of Bridge Street, Ardee, died late last June, aged 95. A former Jubilee nurse (also known as a District nurse), Bridie was once a familiar sight on her black bicycle in Ardee, and in other Irish parishes, moving from home to home, tending the elderly, the sick and the arrival of newborn babies. After retiring early as a nurse, Bridie married the late Alfie Byrne, working with him in the family’s retail grocery business in Ardee, and as a homemaker and mother of five.
“My mother, the former Bridie Brennan, was fond of quoting the famous lines attributed to the late Rosary priest, Fr Patrick Peyton of Co Mayo, ‘The family that prays together, stays together,” said John Aidan Byrne, an award-winning journalist and media consultant, raised in Ardee and now based in the US. John is flying in for the Reunion with his wife, Margaret, and their four young adult children. And he credits the reunion’s positive momentum to an outpouring of family solidarity. “In the end, you could say our mother was perfectly right, if you look at the huge response to our much-anticipated gathering,” added John. “It is certainly a fitting tribute to my mother and her sibling’s enduring Catholic faith and devotion to family, and to the great values passed down by my courageous grandparents.”
“Like her brother Martin, she loved growing up on the small dairy farm in Drumkeen, and as a little girl delivered milk in cans to the houses of Claremorris on a horse and trap,” recalled another of Bridie’s sons, Albert Byrne, in his poignant eulogy at his mother’s funeral service, at the Church of the Nativity of Our Lady, Ardee, June 29, last year. “Each week she would receive her ‘pocket money,’ and this went straight into her post office savings account,” Albert added. “As war broke out across Europe, with her savings she paid for her nurses training in Dublin.”
The Mid-Louth Connection
Mid-Louth is where many of these Brennans settled, with the arrival back in the 1950s of Martin Brennan and his wife, Bridie and Martin’s sister, Bridie. And Ardee and Dundalk will be the scene of much exciting activities to celebrate the Brennan gathering: A house reception; an evening of Ceol agus Craic (Irish for music and fun) at Brian Muldoon’s Brew House on Bridge Street, with a warm local welcome by Councillor Dolores Minogue of the Ardee Municipal District Committee who, as cathaoirleach earlier this year, happily accepted an invitation to speak; a Clay Pigeon Event on the farm of the late Martin Brennan. Also among the highlights, the family will assemble for a special Reunion Reception and Dinner at the Crowne Plaza, Dundalk.
On July 12, the Reunion will officially open with a Family Mass at the Church of the Nativity in Ardee, celebrated by Monsignor Patrick Brennan, pastor of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Portland, Oregon, US. Msgr Brennan is a son of Tommy Brennan and his wife Maria, also deceased. His parents were married in Austria, and shortly after WWII, they settled in the state of Oregon.
“We are excited to unite with our Brennan cousins in Ireland and beyond,” said Msgr Brennan. “Two of my sisters, Maureen and Lori, along with Lori’s daughter, Nellie, will be attending.”
Msgr Brennan recalled how he, Maureen and Lori, visited Ireland last July, 2016, to honor their father, who had died the previous September, aged 96. “It was a wonderful visit,” he said, “connecting with some of our family and visiting family graves.”
Msgr Brennan is clearly looking forward to the return. “We hope to visit with our many other cousins at the reunion–a tribute to our parents, and a long overdue connection with our extended family,” he said. “We have many stories to tell.”
A special commemorative video for the Brennan Family Reunion will be released shortly by Drumkeen Productions Worldwide, in advance of the gathering.