Tom Brady Family History

Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr, better known as the footballer Tom Brady, was born on August 3rd, 1977 to Thomas and Galynn Brady in San Mateo, California.

He was the youngest of their four children, but their only boy.  Growing up, Tom was a natural in sports, excelling in both football and baseball.  Football won out – his hero as a boy was Joe Montana of the San Francisco 49ers – and he played college football at the University of Michigan.

Tom’s Football Career.  At that time Brady was rated as a quarterback but not highly rated.  He was not selected until the sixth round of the NFL Draft in 2000 by the New England Patriots.  But he blossomed with the Patriots under coach Bill Belichick and their record of success became the greatest in NFL history, winning six Super Bowls.

Perhaps even more remarkable was the fact that he left the Patriots for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020 and, reunited with his tight end Rob Gronkowski, won his seventh Super Bowl at the age of forty-three.

Two years later he was still the starting quarterback and took his Buccaneers to the playoffs, although he had lost his glamor wife in the process.  In February 2023 he did finally retire – perhaps the GOAT – at the age of forty-five.

And After.  However, Tom was not done with football.  He simply exchanged playing for the broadcasting booth.  He signed a ten year $375 million contract with Fox Sports to be their lead NFL analyst.  The size of the contract exceeded his entire NFL earnings over his playing career.  Even so, he has undertaken a number of football-related ventures that may take precedence over his broadcasting career.

Irish Potato Famine to America

At the time of the Famine in Ireland, around 1850, John Brady left Milltown village in county Cavan for Boston where he found work as a general laborer.  He married Bridget Bailey there, also a refugee from the Famine, and they had two sons Henry and Phllip.

Sometime before the Civil War, the Brady family departed Boston for the West Coast.  The impetus seems to have come from John’s wife Bridget, her sister Ann and Ann’s husband Lawrence Meegan who had been offered a job in San Francisco as a harness maker.

San Francisco

The Meegans and Bradys lived together in the Mission district of San Francisco, probably closer together after Lawrence Meegan and John’s wife Bridget both died in the 1860’s and John Brady moved in with the Meegans.  Lawrence and Ann’s son Pete Meegan became a baseball pitcher with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1885, but died young in 1905 at the age of forty-two.

The Brady line in San Francisco went as follows:

• Philip Brady (1860-1936) m. Nellie Donoghue
• Harry Brady (1905-1984) m. Peggy Buckley
• and Tom Brady Sr ((b. 1944) m. Galynn Johnson

Philip Brady.  John’s son Philip Brady was a San Francisco firefighter for twenty seven years and was there to respond to the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake. His eldest son Philip was a former police sergeant who was working as a newspaper reporter when he was shot and killed in Oakland in 1922.

Harry Brady.  Philip’s youngest son Harry married Peggy Buckley in San Francisco in 1935.  Her brother Michael Buckley, who was captured in North Africa in 1941, was to be the first American prisoner of war of World War Two.  Harry and Peggy raised seven children, including Tom Sr. – the father of Super Bowl hero Tom Brady – who was born in 1944.

Tom Brady Sr.  Tom married Galynn Johnson, a TWA flight attendant from Minnesota, in 1969 and they settled in the San Francisco suburb of San Mateo.  They are the parents of four children and ten grandchildren.  Thomas ran his own insurance business in San Francisco.

Reader Feedback: I’m pretty sure that my great grandma was first cousin to Tom’s great grandpa Philip Brady and I’m his fourth cousin. Her name was Jeatrice Noska. Joel Zimmermann.

The Minnesota Connection

As a kid Tom would spend summer vacations at his mother’s hometown of Browerville, Minnesota.  There he worked the farm, milked the cows, fished and maybe picked up some old-fashioned Midwestern values.  Browerville indeed was where he first learnt how to chew tobacco.

In this small town Tom’s maternal grandparents Gordon and Bernice Johnson lived and ran their dairy farm. They were also the local haircutters and hairdressers. Their daughter Galynn had been the 1962 homecoming queen.

These Johnsons were descended from Swedish immigrants who came to Minnesota in the 1880’s.  They had first gone to Red Wing along the upper Mississippi river and then, in the mid-1890’s, moved onto Browerville, a small farming community in Todd county.

This Johnson line ran as follows:

• Arthur Johnson (1887-1940) m. Rena Lund
• Gordon Johnson (1918-2016) m. Bernice Obitz
• and Galynn Johnson (b. 1944) m. Tom Brady Sr

Galynn left Minnesota and went to work for TWA Airlines.  There she met Tom Brady Sr.  They married in 1969 and moved to San Mateo, California.

Tom Brady’s’ Family Tree

• John Brady (1824-1897) from Cavan m. Bridget Bailey from Ireland (1824-1886) in Boston in 1853
• – Henry Brady (b. 1857)
• – Philip Brady (1860-1936)

• Philip Brady m. Ellen (Nellie) Donoghue (1865-1949) in San Fransisco in 1895
• – Philip Brady (1896-1922), shot and killed in Oakland
• – Joseph Brady (1898-1954)
• – Helen Brady (1904-1961) m. George Mergens
• – Harold (Harry) Brady (1905-1984)

• Harold (Harry) Brady m. Margaret (Peggy) Buckley (1910-2005) in San Francisco in 1935
• – Mary Brady (b. 1940) m. Dan Alves
• – Philip Brady (1941-2019)
• – Thomas (Tom) Brady (b. 1944)
• – Kathleen Brady m. Al Shelby
• – plus son Harry and daughter Margaret

• Thomas Edward (Tom) Brady m. Galynn Johnson from Minnesota (b. 1944) in 1969
• – Maureen Brady (b. 1972)
• – Julie Brady (b. 1974) m. Kevin Youkilis
• – Nancy Brady (b. 1975) m. Steven Bonelli
• – Thomas (Tom) Brady (b. 1977)