A big social highlight of this 2014 Cup Match season was the Gilbert Family Reunion.

It brought together from near and far, scores of cousins, descendants of the first Gilbert who came to Bermuda from England in the late 1700s with his wife and children.

They settled in Somerset and became one of the biggest land owners in the parish.

Master of Ceremonies at the reunion was Travis Gilbert, who is well known as the Grand Superintendent of Scottish Lodges in Bermuda.

He credited his first cousin Lonnette Cann with conceiving the idea of the reunion.

Another cousin was called upon to briefly trace the family tree.

When he read that the very first Gilbert was Thomas Gilbert Sr, who was listed as a “white Sandys Gentleman”, one of the cousins on the side loudly interpolated “Some kind of gentleman! Rather a scoundrel”, having regard to the fact he impregnated two of the black slave women working on his land.

In any case, another of the family historians Weldon Gilbert, leaping forward with the family tree beyond the Emancipation from Slavery in 1834 showed how the Gilberts asserted themselves as formidable persons on each side of their segregated societies.

One became the first black dentist in the Island; his white cousin became a Chief Justice.

Others pursued careers in business, became educators locally and overseas

The family reunion was narrowed to the point where one of the black Gilberts, John Hebert Gilbert and Lydia Anne Cook Brangman were married February 18, 1896 at St James Parish Church.

Six sons and three daughters sprang from that union. They were the great aunts and uncles of Travis and Lonnette.

The sons for the most part became master mechanics in the British Dockyard and community at large.

Similarly were the male Brangman cousins, like Gerald Brangman, who became one of the founding members of the Bermuda Workers Association.

The Gilbert clan expanded through marriage to the Brangmans, to the Simmonses, Pearmans and Philips; elders of groups migrated to New York and Ohio.

Returning home in fine style for the reunion were cousins Marva Gilbert Todd her daughter Nicole and two grands, whose home is in Norfolk, Virginia.

Also Joycelyn Wilson Fulwood and daughter Deamma — their home is North Carolina; and also home from the US was Lois Brangman.

These cousins, though far from their ancestral Bermuda homeland, keep in touch on a daily basis.

Another cousin, Glena Gilbert, a famed nurse in New York for some 50 years, was also back in Bermuda.

Clarence Gilbert — Marva’s father — was a great Cup Match star of the 1930s.

He like first cousin C Wilfred Pearman, the undertaker, were both noted for their bowling. They figured in the game when Somerset at the Royal Naval Field cleaned out St George’s for 43 runs.

Wilfred was never forgotten for taking the wicket of St George’s cricketing legend Edward “Bosun” Swainson for a duck.