Fifty years after they celebrated their honeymoon in Bermuda, Ginni and Nick DeFelice are back again — and reunited with a host of distant Bermudian relations.

“Wow — this is uncanny,” Mrs DeFelice said after meeting a host of members from the Lamb family in St David’s at historic Carter House yesterday. They are all distantly relatives through Frank Lamb, her grandfather, who got loose feet at a young age and skipped the island for a new life in the United States.

The DeFelices live today in the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland, but chose to celebrate their 1966 wedding in Bermuda because Ginni’s mother, Anella Lamb, often recalled that her great-uncle was buried here.

She knew that she had family on the island, but never got to meet them — sparking her daughter’s fascination with researching her roots.

Back in 2010, with the help of East End historian Ronnie Chameau, the DeFelices found a great-grandmother, Hannah Lamb, discovering in the process that Ms Chameau herself was also related to them. Ms Chameau was only too happy to cater yesterday’s gathering, introducing a variety of St David’s residents to cousins from afar.

A project for another day could be tracing the DeFelice name back to the Italian town of Vacri, but Bermudian roots suffice for the meantime. When the DeFelices first came to the island, they stayed at the long gone Bermudiana Hotel. Much has changed since, but they keep returning to Bermuda.

This week, they came for their reunion with daughter Kara Oliver, son Scott with his wife Tammy, and their son Nick, accompanied by Sandy, his wife. Long sundered ties can regrow with ease, Mr DeFelice noted: when Gary Lamb came to the Baltimore area for his late wife Alfreda to get treated at Johns Hopkins, the families often stayed together.

“I have seen how this can develop — how quickly the warmth grew between our families,” he said.