Meeting my cousins

When I first inherited this job, I was grateful that Sue Usner-Miller gave me so many addresses.  I was also grateful that my cousin, Susan Young, keeps a spreadsheet of names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mails for the descendants of Edwin Brueggeman.  Edwin had 6 children, Edwin (Eddie), William (Bill), Marjorie (Margie), Lois, Carolyn and James (Jim).  I am Jim's daughter.  Edwin had 2 children:  Richard and Deb.  William had 5 children:  Gary, Connie, Janet, Ellen and Tim.  Margie had 3 children:  Tom, David and John.  Lois had two children:  Susan and Donna.  Carolyn had three children:  Rachel, Rebecca and Nathan, and one child her husband adopted, Sharon.  I have one sibling, Jeff.  I am the youngest of our group.  A few of my first cousins have children older than I am.  I THINK I am the youngest of my generation for all the descendants of EA Brueggeman, but I'm not sure yet.  A little more digging and I'll know.

Lydia's clan is also very much in touch with each other.  Deb Greive collected all of their information for me!  So, I had two clans fully completed fairly quickly.  That left 8 to go!  Earl and Myrna Brueggeman (from the Karl clan) got me a little farther, their clan was quickly 1/2 done.  (as far as I knew, I hadn't yet realized that EA was 1 of 9 who began the reunion).  Over the past 2 years I've been reaching out to my more distant cousins.  Contact with each one brings such joy to me!  I'm quickly learning the names (but still don't know the faces) of each of them.

My father's generation has been instrumental in helping me.  My Aunt, Lois Smith, gives me information to run with.  I also started a facebook group and invited all of the family I was already friends with, including Earl, and started searching names from the genealogy my father, Jim Brueggeman keeps.  I was so pleased to begin communication with August's clan fairly quickly.

This year, I sent a letter out instead of invitations, and I included the facebook group and my personal e-mail (and our phone numbers) on it.  I've been pleasantly surprised to find our facebook group has grown to 96 members.  The facebook group brought me Anita Ross, Karl's youngest.  Anita had done 23andme or something along those lines and could contact one of Emma's grandchildren.  Pam Carlton led me to many addresses!

At that point I was overwhelmed with addresses and information.  I started an AppleId just for our family and began entering information.  I set up an e-mail (BrueggemanReunion@gmail.com), and this blog, to help me organize my thoughts.  I now have 214 addresses, most of them from the descendants of EA Brueggeman.  I have a few more to enter.

At the end of next month we will send invitations explaining how we, as a family will deal with the pandemic.

All that is a preface.  Each cousin I contact brings such joy and brings new depth to my understanding of our family.  It is amazing how many remember one or two reunions, how many talk about the glue that holds our family together.  We have so many in our family,  yet we are all connected.  I'm going to start sharing our family's rich history, try and find the threads that weave through us and share it with all of you.