What is your wildest coincidence?

[Hollander]

Write that article! Fascinating story!

One day . . . 

[Biggles50]

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.

[coombs]

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.

[tillypeg]

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!

[brigidmac]

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

[coombs]

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.

[Nick_Ips]

I did love that old FRC.

Me too.  Also responsible for my family history 'wildest coincidence'.

Before it closed for good I spent as much time as I could there - often going after leaving work.  Normally I'd get the train to either Highbury & Islington or Essex Road, then the bus to Rosebery Avenue.

To maximise use of the time available I'd print lists of things I needed to do.  On this random occasion I was later than normal, and sitting on a number 38 bus.  I unusually got my notes out to check through what I was going to do so I'd have a head start as soon as I got to the FRC.

Then the woman sitting next to me on the bus apologises for reading my notes, but she couldn't help but see the slightly unusual family name of her partner written down several times.  Turns out her partner's family were originally from the small Norfolk village my ancestors were from, and I later discovered were in fact related.

[Ayashi]

My parents married and moved to a part of the country that none of my ancestors came from (Southeast). When I did research into branches of my family from Cornwall, I ended up speaking to distant cousins who were born and raised in Cornwall. It later turned out they got married in the church next to my house! They asked if the place they had the wedding reception still existed and I said yes, I can see it from my window 

Another Rootschatter who thought he might be related to me via that family told me his mother used to live in a town five minutes down the road from where I live and then moved to the small village in Wales that a different branch of my family came from   

Then there's the Rootschatter here who is my 9th cousin... who was born in the same hospital in the same month and same year as my mother... 2500 miles away 

Small world as they say!!

[coombs]

I did love that old FRC.

Me too.  Also responsible for my family history 'wildest coincidence'.

Before it closed for good I spent as much time as I could there - often going after leaving work.  Normally I'd get the train to either Highbury & Islington or Essex Road, then the bus to Rosebery Avenue.

To maximise use of the time available I'd print lists of things I needed to do.  On this random occasion I was later than normal, and sitting on a number 38 bus.  I unusually got my notes out to check through what I was going to do so I'd have a head start as soon as I got to the FRC.

Then the woman sitting next to me on the bus apologises for reading my notes, but she couldn't help but see the slightly unusual family name of her partner written down several times.  Turns out her partner's family were originally from the small Norfolk village my ancestors were from, and I later discovered were in fact related.

I went there to check a 1933 birth entry of a distant relative many years ago, and it got me hooked on genealogy ever since. When i looked at the ledgers, I thought "Well where is the date of birth then?" and I was told I had to send off for the birth cert to get the DOB.

I then had a sneak look at the birth entry of a close friend and work colleague born in December 1944.