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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: Josephine on Friday 29 August 25 18:04 BST (UK)
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Here's mine.
Picture this: a small wedding held in a private home in 1911 in El Paso, Texas.
The groom was living in New Mexico at the time but he had previously lived in El Paso. The bride was from a different city in Texas.
I'm researching the groom and his family because I've finally (just this month) figured out a DNA puzzle that's been driving me crazy ever since I got my DNA test results in 2021. I believe the groom in question was my great-great-uncle.
The groom's family had moved to Texas at some point in the previous 15 years, but were originally from Louisiana. Prior to settling in Louisiana in the late 1700s or so, they were from France and Spain.
So from France and Spain to Louisiana, then to Texas and on to New Mexico, but back to Texas for his wedding: that's the groom. He's on my father's side of the family (according to the DNA.)
The minister who officiated at this 1911 wedding was a descendant of my maternal grandmother's distant family from Scotland. That branch of the family had gone from Scotland to Canada (first Quebec, then Ontario), then on to the US (New York).
One of their sons became a Presbyterian minister and lived for several years in various parts of Texas, including El Paso, before moving on to Oregon.
So from Scotland to Quebec to Ontario to New York to El Paso, Texas (and onward from there). The minister is on my mother's side of the family.
I was born and raised in Canada. My third cousin three times removed (on my mother's side) was the minister who officiated at my great-great-uncle's (on my father's side) wedding in 1911 in Texas. And I only know this because a) I'm a genealogy buff, and b) I can access these records online.
My mind is officially blown.
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My father would have said "It's a small world".
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I moved for work reasons from Yorkshire to Witney in Oxfordshire in the 1970s. About the same I began to research my family history and was helped by a couple of Victorian marriage certificates that my father had inherited. The marriages were both in Bristol where I considered all my immediate ancestors to have lived. I checked on the oldest of the certificates as the groom had a very unusual surname and would have been born c1840.
In those days one had to travel to St Catherines House in London to consult the very large and heavy indices for births. On finding only one candidate I ordered the birth certificate and discovered that he had been born in the street next to one I was living in. I thought 'this fh researching is a piece of cake'. If only….
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I ordered the 1810 baptism certificate of my 2great grandfather, to my surprise the next entry was my husband's 3 great granduncle. The families moved away from that area and it wasn't until I started researching that I knew that our ancestors came from the same area.
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When I started researching OH's family tree, an unusual name popped up in his tree which I thought I'd seen before. On checking I discovered that OH and I share a 2nd cousin, but we are not related to each other.
The other coincidence is my neighbour of over 30 years turns out to be my 4th cousin!
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Absolutely love hearing these!
Mine is probably discovering that the classmate with whom I did my first torts assignment at law school is actually my third cousin!!!
Neither of us/our parents were born in the country in which we studied, making it a truly remarkable coincidence. When looking at a family will I came across the same name as my old classmate, and immediately messaged her to ask if it was indeed her. She confirmed it and we had a lovely evening sharing all the family gossip over some Aperol spritzes!
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Perhaps one more to add. My granny discovered, through Ancestry DNA, that she had a paternal half-brother. I was explaining this to my granny's maternal niece & this niece's husband (so, no relation at all to the half-brother, and born in different countries!) - and I showed them a photograph of this half-brother. The niece's husband said "Oh I know him, we go shooting together!"
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I met a married couple researching in the library. They had discovered they had a common ancestor, who had married twice. They were one generation apart, I think it was four and five generations previously.
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I discovered when I researched the wider reaches of my Kent ancestry that I was at primary school with a 4th cousin, and secondary school with a 3rd cousin from a quite different part of the family. None of us were aware of it at the time and it makes me wonder how much our ancestors knew of these distant relationships - maybe more than we think?
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I was about to start exactly this thread.
Zaph
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I'm another example of discovering that someone I know is a distant cousin. When I had my DNA test done I found out that a childhood friend from the next street was a 4th cousin. The connection is through our late mothers, who were very good friends. Such a shame they never knew at the time as they were both keen on family history.
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Helping a family friend here in Norfolk with their research, and finding they had a great grandmother born in Leigh On Sea in Essex in 1855, and that same Essex village is where my dad's great grandmother was born in 1839. I then found that both women descend from the same Whitfield family in the 1700s in Leigh On Sea.
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I was at school with three sisters, whom I knew because their father worked with mine in a family business. What had never been explained to me was they were third cousins, because it was their MOTHER who was a second cousin of my father. Her husband had been invited to join the business at the end of WW2.
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My Brother in the 60’s used to hitch down south to collect a new car and to drive it back to the dealership who would then pass it on to the new owner.
On one occasion he picked up a hitchhiking Soldier on the A6 who just happened to be seeking a lift to the same town as my Brother was travelling to.
Roll on thirty years and he and his Wife were having dinner with a married couple who they had known for about ten years and Brother started to tell the tale of his delivery adventures and of the meeting with the Soldier.
There male friend then finished the tale and told them all of what they had been taking about, for he was that Soldier.
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There male friend then finished the tale and told them all of what they had been taking about
And friends, the story is true. I know, I was that soldier.
Sounds familiar!
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I met my OH in 2007 and eventually we discovered his direct male ancestor and his wife had come to Canada from Lancashire around 1842; this was written up in a document by another family member. My father was born in Burnley, Lancs., and OH ‘s lot came from Preston. Then I realized that his female ancestor was born in Chipping, Lancs., as was one of my 3x great-grandmothers. Not a large place at all, and almost certainly our ancestors would have known each other.
Another coincidence is that we both had grandmothers with the maiden name of Oliver, his Olivers are Protestants from Ireland, mine were in Sussex forever.
One day in the late 1980’s, when I was using the LDS library in Ottawa, one of the volunteers asked me what was my interest in Heathfield, Sussex, as I had ordered a microfilm of the parish records. I explained my mother was born there and I was trying to trace some of my ancestors. Turns out John’s wife was from there, and they had been married there. It also transpired that all three of us were Harmer descendants, a local family with roots in the area going back hundreds of years.
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And coincidences that you have some ancestors from an area where you loved for ages and loved to go on holiday to, or used to travel through a lot, or if you was born and raised in a different area of the country to your parents, that some of their ancestry goes back to where you were raised and where they decided to move to before you was born.
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Documenting an area through family history and then destiny getting me to walk through that area on a regular basis past many of the streets where one part of my family once lived.
C
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I live in an area of the UK that has no relationship to where my close family were born.
Quite a few drinking buddies in the town who met up often.
Through doing my family tree, I have found that two of the pals are distantly related to me.
One through a cousin in the army who married a local girl.
And one through my son's wife's cousins
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I was visiting a certain Lancashire town for the first time, and after doing some shopping I went into a café for a coffee. It was rather full, so I approached a table which had some spaces free and asked the man who was sitting there with his child if I could join them. When he looked up, I realised that not only did I know him but that it was my second cousin, who I had not seen since he was a young man. He did not live in the town either and had just come there on an errand.
Not very wild, I know, but a great pleasure all the same. We have kept in touch on family matters ever since. He has done a great deal of family history research and was able to fill in some gaps for me and I for him. Our mothers were cousins and were brought up very closely, so we saw a lot of him and his brother when they were young. Of course we share a great-grandfather.
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I had a family member living in 1861 census in Bermondsey Road, london. A couple of years ago I asked my 1st cousin to take me to the address so i could take a photograph. I asked him if he knew the area, his response was yes he knew the area and house as he owned it and rented it out. That same day I asked him to take me to Wenlock St. Again I asked if he knew where it was, yes he replied his dad, my uncle was in an old folks home in Wenlock St next to the property I wanted to see.
SS
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My dads parents, my paternal grandparents are not related, well if they are it is no later than the early 1700s. Both were born in Essex of Essex and some Suffolk and Oxfordshire ancestry. My grandad's great gran Sarah Brain was in Oxford in 1861 living just a street or 2 away from my gran's father James Edgington who was 9 in 1861. Sarah Brain moved to London via Spalding 1863/1864, then settled in Essex once she wed an Essex bargeman in 1866. And James Edgington's daughter (my paternal gran's mother) moved to Essex via London and Sussex.
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I knew I had a wilder one, just remembered it...
From one of my paternal great-grandmothers go horizontally across the tree through four people. She had a sister Emma Jane who married John Charles Stringer, and lived in Sheffield. His brother Samuel Willis Stringer went to Newcastle upon Tyne and married Margaret Ann Redshaw. Margaret's grandfather George Redshaw was in textiles - he had moved from Leeds to a flax spinning mill in Nidderdale - New York Mill, Summerbridge, which opened in 1825 and had its own workers' housing.
In my maternal family, go straight back five generations via a largely female line. 3xgt grandfather Richard Eskholme was a flax dresser, who had moved from Whitehaven to New York Mill by 1826. In 1841 and 1851 he was living NEXT DOOR to George Redshaw.
Of course there was no connection until my parents unwittingly got married!
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I was once trawling through some PR's for a certain ancestor in Essex then by chance at the same parish I found a long awaited marriage record for another ancestor, and finally got the woman's maiden name, and the 2 witnesses.
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Wow, these are all great stories!
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My Maternal Grandfather was born in Bradford, as was his father and mother hence the City and surrounding area is of great interest.
Roll on 125 years and we are on Social Media, both my Mancunian Wife and I.
She is on Facebook and said to me one day that a long time Facebook friend of hers just happens to run a Genealogy Group which covers an area near Bradford which just happens to include Birstal St Mary, which a lot of you who are researching family in the area will know as the parish did seem to cover a large geographical area.
I joined there Group and found some very useful information.
One day a member posted about a family name, namely Raistrick (yes the village of the same name and the famous Brass Band) I responded and so did the Group Admin and we then compared Trees.
Turns out she and I are Fourth Cousins Once Removed and we could share even more family information.
During a conversation she learned where I was born and mentioned that he Mum’s First Cousin whilst being born in Bradford moved with his parents to the same Town as where I lived.
On learning his name I replied that I knew him from the age of eight, he was at the wedding of my Brother where his Wife was one of my Sister in Law’s Bridesmaid. My Brother was the Godfather of their two Sons. He was our Fourth Cousin but sadly he passed away as has my Brother before they were made aware of our family connection.
So a double coincidence.
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The famous band is the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band (not Raistrick)
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I worked for many years in Bunhill Row in London, unaware of any connections. I later discovered that my 3 x Gt grandfather, and his brother were jewelers and watchmakers in Bunhill Row in a shop that had been very near where my offices were built many many decades later.
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Years ago my daughters were living in Surrey, BC, close to Vancouver. I had found a relative from Sussex who had died in BC, and as they were going to the main Vancouver library, could they look up his death in the local newspaper on microfilm (I had the date). They did this for me, and it turned out the man had lived on the very street they were living on in Surrey. Quite a large urban area, so this was quite a coincidence.
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Finding my wife's ancestor in the 1841 census, and then turning a couple of pages and discovering that he'd signed and dated the last page of the census book as the enumerator.
Not sure if that counts as a coincidence but it's quite a thing. How many enumerators signed their census books?
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Decades ago I used to work in Elgin tourist information centre. After work I used to go to the library to research my family, having discovered to my surprise that there were lots of them in Elgin, several counties away from where I was born.
One evening I discovered that a family named Wiseman who had a garden business in Elgin in the 19th century were related to me, and next day I was itching for 5 o'clock so I could go and find out more about them.
To my astonishment, I overheard a North American accent at the public counter asking about the Wisemans who had a garden business in Elgin!! So I shot out of the back office, swept all my staff aside and took over. Within a few minutes we had the whole place covered with documents, and worked out that the wife was my 5th cousin once removed on my father's father's side.
The husband then asked me where the connection was, and I replied that it was a Leslie family from Rothes, about 10 miles away. He replied, "Oh my goodness, we have Leslie neighbours back home".
So I replied, joking, "Oh, that will be Ardith and Bryson then?"
They looked at me in shock, disbelief and near horror, and he eventually said, "There is no way you could know the unusual given names of our next-door neighbours in Belleville, Ontario!" (Until this point I didn't even know they lived in Canada, never mind Ontario, let alone Belleville.)
But so it proved to be. Their next-door neighbours were my mother's third cousin Bryson and his wife Ardith.
Sadly, both couples have since died, though I was able to visit Belleville and meet many of the descendants of both families.
And by the way, the couple's daughter is married to a great-great-grandson of David Kerr, whose brother's wife was my 4th cousin 3 times removed on my father's mother's side.
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Born in Norfolk to Essex parents, but both of some Norfolk blood, and I found that a Norwich resident ancestor applied for admin of the estate of someone who lived in a village just a couple of miles from my childhood villages of Thurne and Rollesby. And a Suffolk ancestor witnessed a marriage in Gt Yarmouth in 1775, my home town, and her brother in law had a pub in GY.
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Many years ago my ex and I lived in the same town as his first cousin (they had both moved away from their home area). The cousin’s wife had her mother visiting, and we got to chatting. I knew she was from Sussex, as my mother was, and they were both war brides from WW2, both coming to Canada soon after the War. ended, but they did not know each other, but lived only 100 miles apart.
For some reason, the topic of Vera Lynn came up, and I said, I know someone who’s maiden name was Vera Lynn! Cousin’s wife’s mother just looked at me and said, a Vera Lynn was a neighbour of mine in Hove, we knew each other as children. Comparing notes later this turned out to be the same Vera Lynn my mother had worked in an office with in Brighton. My mother and Vera both joined the Observer Corps early in the War. I also visited with Vera on three trips to England. She ended up in Yorkshire.
No, she was not the famous Vera Lynn, but a very dear person. What a coincidence that she knew the future mother-in-law of her friend Joyce’s son in law’s cousin, that one day the two families would have a common bond, all those thousands of miles away.
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In the midst of a move from Oxford to Sheffield in 2021, I was staying in a rental cottage close to Chesterfield, and took the opportunity of further research into my late husband's Sheffield/Dronfield heritage.
I was gratified to find entries for his paternal line in various 19th century censuses very close to my location - it was a farming family - including a greatx2 grandparent in the 1891 in the pub a few doors down from where I was staying.
So when my sister in law (my husband's brother's wife) came for a cup of tea one day we had a pleasant walk up to a church in a local village to see if we could track down a tombstone for the various family members who had been buried there.
We enjoyed the walk, loved the church, but were not successful finding the tombstone, unfortunately.
My sister-in-law incautiously mentioned that her mum (brought up in the West Midlands) knew very little about her father who apparently came originally from Derbyshire.
She now knows that telling a family history researcher anything like that is likely to start an enthusiastic hunt - and sure enough, I soon had a family tree roughed out for her on Ancestry on my laptop in my rented cottage.
However, the most amazing coincidence was that I was able to ring her later the same day to say that her greatx3 grandparents had been married in 1849 in the same church we'd visited that afternoon.
I've subsequently found hers and my husband's relatives' gravestones in the churchyard, too.
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Not researching my ancestors, but genealogical research, nonetheless.
Some years ago I was researching a murder which occurred in the mid 19th century close to my present day home, with a view to writing an article about it.
When I ran out of contemporary sources, I hit on the idea of trying to find descendants of the murder victim, to see if they could help me in my research, but as is often said, I found it was far more difficult trying to 'trace forward' than back.
I was at home one evening after spending the day making a fruitless search through news archive microfilm, when an old friend and former colleague called to see me at my home.
We had worked together as police constables, and he was now on the C.I.D., at the local police station.
We were both in the mood for a good moan.
I told him about my research, and of the difficulties I was experiencing with it.
When I had finished, he told me his problems.
He had arrested a team of travelling burglars, who had been targetting garages and car workshops everywhere between Cornwall and the Lake District, stealing tools, and valuable equipment. As a result of the arrest, he had recovered hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of stolen property, and he now had to try and reunite this property with its rightful owners.
This task would oblige him to spend the next few days in the office making telephone calls around the country, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. I murmured a few appropriately sympathetic words, and shortly afterwards, he left.
The following morning, I received a telephone call.
It was my friend, speaking from his office at the police station. ‘You will not believe this . . .’ he said . . .
He went on to tell me he had arrived in his office a few minutes earlier, to start the telephone enquiries he had told me of the night before.
The first number he had dialled was that of a garage in Mawnan Smith, near Falmouth in Cornwall.
A young woman answered the phone.
He introduced himself, told her he was on the C.I.D., and gave the location of his police station.
‘That’s odd’, she replied, ‘one of my ancestors was murdered near there, years ago’.
My friend was talking to the great great grandniece of ‘my’ murder victim.
She was fascinated to hear of my research, and asked my friend to pass on her phone number to me.
She was able to put me in touch with other descendants of the murder victim, many of whom only lived a short walk from my home, and they were able to provide me with a great deal of information.
The article has still to be written!
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Not researching my ancestors, but genealogical research, nonetheless.
Some years ago I was researching a murder which occurred in the mid 19th century close to my present day home, with a view to writing an article about it.
When I ran out of contemporary sources, I hit on the idea of trying to find descendants of the murder victim, to see if they could help me in my research, but as is often said, I found it was far more difficult trying to 'trace forward' than back.
I was at home one evening after spending the day making a fruitless search through news archive microfilm, when an old friend and former colleague called to see me at my home.
We had worked together as police constables, and he was now on the C.I.D., at the local police station.
We were both in the mood for a good moan.
I told him about my research, and of the difficulties I was experiencing with it.
When I had finished, he told me his problems.
He had arrested a team of travelling burglars, who had been targetting garages and car workshops everywhere between Cornwall and the Lake District, stealing tools, and valuable equipment. As a result of the arrest, he had recovered hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of stolen property, and he now had to try and reunite this property with its rightful owners.
This task would oblige him to spend the next few days in the office making telephone calls around the country, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. I murmured a few appropriately sympathetic words, and shortly afterwards, he left.
The following morning, I received a telephone call.
It was my friend, speaking from his office at the police station. ‘You will not believe this . . .’ he said . . .
He went on to tell me he had arrived in his office a few minutes earlier, to start the telephone enquiries he had told me of the night before.
The first number he had dialled was that of a garage in Mawnan Smith, near Falmouth in Cornwall.
A young woman answered the phone.
He introduced himself, told her he was on the C.I.D., and gave the location of his police station.
‘That’s odd’, she replied, ‘one of my ancestors was murdered near there, years ago’.
My friend was talking to the great great grandniece of ‘my’ murder victim.
She was fascinated to hear of my research, and asked my friend to pass on her phone number to me.
She was able to put me in touch with other descendants of the murder victim, many of whom only lived a short walk from my home, and they were able to provide me with a great deal of information.
The article has still to be written!
Write that article! Fascinating story!
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Write that article! Fascinating story!
One day . . . ;)
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When I was in my late teens and early twenties I kept being mistaken for another person, often resulting in the person initiating contact then saying “you are a dead ringer for George”.
BTW George is not his real name which is one that has not often been given to a boy child in the latter part of the 20thC.
Roll on to 2024 and I contact a person who I believe shares a significant amount of DNA with me.
We talk and I then find his Sister and as I approach her house she is at the door.
The resemblance between her and me is astounding.
Her DNA test reveals that she is my Half Sister.
George is therefore in fact my Half Brother and we do look very much alike so it is not surprising that I was often mistaken for him.
Yes his name is the one not often given and hence why I still remembered it 50 years later.
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In the Family Records Centre in Clerkenwell in early 2004 I had a brief chat with a woman and I mentioned the surname Coombs, and she said she has a Coombes, with the "e". And she mentioned actress Pat Coombs, and I was thinking of Pat shortly before, when I looked up my gran's birth entry in the indexes and found her mothers maiden surname was Coombs.
I did love that old FRC.
By another sheer coincidence I met up in Norwich with some fellow genealogists from Genes Reunited, and a few months later I saw one of them at the FRC in London, 150 miles away.
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I was just sorting through one of my family tree folders which hadn't seen the light of day for a couple of years and came across a photo taken in the Cornwall Record Office in Truro some years ago when I first began my research. It was of a marriage register entry from 1849, before such things were digitised and put online. Being of a curious nature, I turned the photo over and found that the photo had been printed on - 5.11.2005 - exactly 20 years ago today!
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Love your story Biggles
I've got a doppelganger in Leicester apparently but don't think i.ll have a half sister
I like the word serendipity for coincidences
I have the same birthday as 1 of my great grandmother s exactly 100 years apart
& I.have a paternal cousin &.a paternal 3rdcousin/friend who both had birthdays TODAY
That should be easy to remember Remember
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I have a Sussex landowner in the 1600s who descends from a Lincolnshire woman whose sister married into the Cornwell family of Wimbish in Essex, and I descend from that Cornwell family through another line.