The Moran Clan reunites for a day in Brooklyn

They came from as far as Luxembourg and as near as a few blocks for a reunion and bus tour of the Brooklyn neighborhoods where their ancestors had lived, beginning with 107 Pioneer Street (now Warren Street) in Red Hook where Michael Moran (1834-1906) lived when he founded Moran Towing in New York harbor more than 150 years ago. Everyone received a lapel sticker with the family crest, three golden stars under the word Moran, and a printout of more than a dozen homes of Morans past provided by Diana Moran Charbier, a great-granddaughter of Michael. Her husband William served as tour guide.

Several of the 17 Morans present this fine September day were descended from Michael’s third son, Eugene (1873-1961), a maritime oracle who became known as The Dean of the Harbor during his long career running the company and apparently New York City as well. (He prevented Robert Moses from putting a bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn rather than the tunnel we now have.)

Some cousins have kept in touch over the years, but a few were meeting for the first time. Edmund “Ned” Moran, a grandson of Eugene’s brother Thomas, said of his Luxembourg cousin W. Dirk Warren, “I never saw him before today.” Ned, by the way, is the only Moran who still works for Moran Towing, which was sold out of the family in the 1990s.

The lone tug man, Captain John Cray, sporting a handlebar mustache, flew down from Portland, Maine for the day. Cray’s grandmother was Eugene’s sister Agnes Moran (1874-1939). Cray began working for Moran’s East Coast operations and later left to become a pilot on his own and a consultant on tug or piloting operations. Ned told the others how Cray helped settle the tug strikes of the 1980s. “If he had not done that the company would have been very different in the last 40 years.” Another grandson of Agnes, Mike Bellford from Long Island, was also present.

Eugene Dwyer from Virginia handed out a printed Moran genealogy, while his brother Tom from Connecticut offered a map of south Brooklyn with Moran homes noted. Their sister Doris, a Daughter of Charity, has lived in Texas for 38 years. When the Dwyers’ father Thomas married Eugenia Moran in 1930, it connected two Irish families that had been in the maritime trade since the days of the Erie Canal.

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Nster.com