I am amazed at how often I locate people close to a significant date
e.g. just yesterday I located an ancestor for someone, and her birthday was today
That happens to me very often too and never ceases to give me goose bumps. I must have stumbled upon the baptism, marriage or death record on the exact anniversary dozens of times now, which makes me feel it is more than just coincidence.
I'm a bit thick as I never attributed imminent birthdays as a trigger to finding ancestors. This might explain my latest finding. A few days ago I changed my avatar on another website to commemorate by mother's 28th October birthday and not long afterwards found "Hilda" who used to live near us. This prompted me to come onto rootschat to comment on it and, of course, I looked on the homepage, followed a link and as a direct result found myself reading the history of St. Andrews Castle in Fife where it dawned on me that some psychic genealogy clues I'd been given a decade ago could apply to my mother's English roots and not my paternal grandmother's Edinburgh roots as I'd originally thought. A stepmother in her line was a "Helen Knox" and I'm pretty sure that the clues I was given referred to John Knox the Reformer. I didn't research Helen because she's not my bloodline. One of the clues I'd been given was "St. Andrews", I know of St. Andrews the golf course and as one of my father's schools was a St. Andrew church, Glasgow, I knew about that too, but I didn't know there was a St. Andrews Castle that was once the abode of Scottish Bishops and had come under attack at a time when there was a tussle between the Catholics and Presbyterians in the 1500s.
Here's the short notes I made of the clues I followed at the time:-
*He's big in the church
*Edinburgh,(
Knox lived i Edinburgh for a time)*waving incense - high church in your family
*St. Andrews
*County Durham (
Durham Cathedral was built by Catholic Queen Ann - it's now Presbyterian and John Knox preached there)*Elizabeth, she's walking towards an old turret and there's stairs inside, - looks like a church. There's a man standing there wearing a hat (she made gestures to describe the hat) he's dressed in burgundy with gold and underneath he's wearing a white robe.
portraits of bishops show clothe similar to the description)*"People are hiding there, I can see them coming out from behind chairs. Elizabeth helps people. She helps poor people, she takes food to poor people."
*Presbyterian, Catholic "I can't make out whether his name is Rochester or it's a place Rochester" (
Knox was offered the Bishopric of Rochester which he turned down)* "Have you got a blood disease in yur family"? (NO)
* There's a connection to Royalty
* "I'm now on the River Thames, Henry V and Henry VI
* I must have protested about any Royalty connection at this stage because my next note is "Be open minded"
"Seal on piece of paper.
*Gwynne
++
At the time I didn't connect those notes with these notes:-
*Lucy
Yorkshire born Lucy Speight b1854 was my grandmother's mother*Richmond / Egerton (Edgerton?) / Yorkshire
Westmoreland
Bowes museum - you've been there
Windsor - you've been there
++
John Knox had a connection through marriage to the Bowes family. (Windsor = Bowes-Lyon = Queen Mother).
++
I haven't taken Lucy Speight's line back further than the late 1700s and so far there's no Bowes in the line. However, she is descended from an "Askin" which could lead back to the "Aske" family which in turn is linked to the Bowes family.
from Wiki:-
Elizabeth Bowes (née Aske) (1505 – c.1572) was an English Protestant exile, and a follower of John Knox, her son-in-law.
Was this the Elizabeth who helped the poor people?I hope some of you found this interesting
