What is your wildest coincidence?

[Dyingout]

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

[Gillg]

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. 

[softly softly]

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

[coombs]

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.

[MollyC]

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!

[coombs]

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.

[Josephine]

Wow, these are all great stories!

[Biggles50]

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.

[Familysearch]

The famous band is the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band (not Raistrick)