NOTE: I accepted the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge headed by fellow genealogy blogger Amy Johnson Crow in January 2023. The idea behind this challenge is that you will receive email prompts, a word or phrase, every week, and you find something about your research or family history to write about. I write in a journal about all the prompts, but I blog about at least one prompt a month. Click HERE to read about how I have incorporated this challenge in my blogging.
Summers have always been about family reunions in my family. Whether it was an organized reunion on a particular weekend with events, t-shirts, and a banquet, or if it was family coming into town for a couple of weeks to visit. I have wonderful memories of my aunts coming from Chicago and Michigan every summer. It was during the summer that I got to spend time with my visiting cousins. Those family memories are one of the reasons why I have always loved the summer.
Since I have written about family reunions before, I thought I would share some interesting information that I learned when I was preparing a family history presentation for my family reunion in 2017. The origin of a family reunion historically dates back to the Emancipation, when formally enslaved people sought out the family they were separated from while enslaved. This tradition would become a continuous celebration of kinship and resilience that African American families endured.
Anytime my family gets together, it’s always a great time to be had. We laugh, eat, reminisce, and create new memories. It doesn’t matter if there are five of us or 50 of us, we just enjoy being together.
Journey Through the Generations 
Very interesting info about the origin of family reunions! Nothing like bright colored shirts to announce your family being together!
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A bright t-shirt is a much for a family reunion. We all wear them on the same day while we are out touring the city we are in that year.
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I didn’t know that bit of history. Our reunion is rooted in the much larger revival that used to accompany the Homecoming on Sunday morning, which is why ours is still focused on Homecoming service and no one actually calls it a family reunion. Very interesting. Thanks!
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I think the revival you write about is great. It immediately made me think of the book Somerset Homecoming: Recovering a Lost Heritage by Dorothy Redford, except that was a one time reunion. And yours is a yearly affair. 144 years of kinship, fellowship, history, and community is really something we don’t see very much of in this day and time. Thanks so much for sharing!!!!
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Thank you!!!
I loved Somerset. Very inspirational for me when writing my first book. It also inspired a more traditional reunion we had in 87 on 4th of July weekend. Now another cousin has tried to start a more traditional reunion in late June based in Winston Salem. She’s also talked about doing a destination reunion but Covid interrupted and we haven’t got back to it.
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Both sides of my mother’s family have reunions. Her paternal side since the early 1970s. So I have always gone to family reunions growing up. My parents high school closed because of intergration in 1970, and that school has reunions every two years since 1988. When I read Somerset in the beginning of my research, I knew this was what I was meant to do, researching that is, not coordinating a reunion. Family, food, fun, and summer days is what I think of when I think of reunions because of my own experiences. Now I see the importance of getting together and extending our family legacy to all generations.
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Yes indeed!
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