What is your wildest coincidence?

[ptdrifter]

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.

[DianaCanada]

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.

[ShaunJ]

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?

[Forfarian]

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.

[coombs]

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.

[DianaCanada]

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.

[IgorStrav]

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.

[Hollander]

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!

[DianaCanada]

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!