Weird Coincidence

[Somerset Sal]

My grandfather's family lived in East Grinstead in Sussex for centuries; his branch of the family moved to London in about 1850. He met and married my grandmother in London in the 1920s.

One of my grandmother's forebears went to live in East Grinstead for a few years, where he got married in 1772. On his wedding registry entry one of the witnesses is an ancestor of my grandfather.

So one of my grandfather's ancestors was good friends with one of my grandmother's ancestors over 150 years before grandfather and grandmother met.

Does anyone else find unexpected links across the family tree?

[Janet in Yorkshire]

For research and recording convenience, I have 2 trees - one for my mother (born in Yorkshire) and another for my father (born in Northumberland.)
In theory, the two trees should only join with my appearance.

However,
My mother's ancestor was William Finch, born Brisley Norfolk in 1775.
My father's ancestress was Ann Mary Dodman, born Fring Norfolk in 1786.

At Horningtoft Norfolk, on 24th December, 1912, Alfred Dodman (gt-gt- nephew of Ann Mary) was married to Mary Elizabeth Mickleburgh, gt-grand- daughter of William Finch.

That's put a spanner in the works.:Big Grin:

Jay

[naomiatt]

Hi - not so much in the tree - but trying to sort it out! I've been in touch with a lady for about a year and a half - she's been really helpful and we just 'clicked'. One day, just out of the blue, she mentioned her mother who had passed away. I asked the surname, and said it rang a bell, bearing in mind, between us we've been looking at lots and lots of different families, then it dawned on me..I remembered the surname from when I was a little girl at my aunty's house....I called my aunt...turns out she was a close friend of my e mail pal's mother....not only that, my e mail pal's sister was born just a few days after me and our mum's were in the same ward!

[greybird]

I put this story on a GR board a while ago, so apologies to anyone who's already seen it!

My g.g.g.grandfather, who was from Cornwall, served in the Royal Navy and was on board HMS Genoa in the Battle of Navarino, 1827 (fought in a bay on the Greek Coast). This was researched by my brother at Kew.

A few years ago, I went to a summer party in SW London with a friend. The party was given by a business client of my friend, and neither of us knew anyone else there. We stood on the lawn trying to make conversation with a man and a woman, who were not together. The woman said she was a researcher at the records office in Kew and had just finished researching a ship called The Black Joke. The man was most surprised as his ancestor had served on that ship. I told her about my ancestor and HMS Genoa and it turned out that the man's ancestor had also been on the same ship in the battle. Both men appeared in the ship's muster book.

[Little Nell]

Not sure I am a huge believer in coincidence. At various points my and my ex's families have had members living in the same road, or close by, in various bits of London. I think that just shows that they were roughly the same economic grouping and lived in the same kinds of area.

Though I did recently discover that a gt uncle of my Mum, who we thought had lived all his life in Gloucestershire and then Monmouthshire, was stationed at Caterham Barracks during WW1 - which is a stone's throw from where my Mum lives!

[dicole]

My dad's paternal family came to NSW from a small village called Hurst near Wokingham, and I have discovered that some of the my father-in-law's maternal family lived in the same small village, although most of them were in Wokingham itself. From what I can find, the families married into the same families, but never to each other until OH and I did in 1979.

My ancestors came to NSW from 12 different counties of England and 1 in Scotland. OH's came from 8 English Counties, 2 Scottish and 2 from Ireland, so you can see, the chances of coming from the same places would be fairly small.

[Lindsay]

We knew a lot of OH's family came from Essex, but we were surprised to discover that his GGG grandparents lived within 100 yards of where we live now, and his GGG grandmother is buried in the local churchyard.

[Somerset Sal]

Wow! It looks as though lots of family trees criss-cross! Thank you folks.

[maggie_4_7]

Mine doesn't criss cross at all but my OH's is a bit weird to be honest and I am now in a pickle with both his Shoreditch/Spitalfields family and his Essex lot because they all seem marry each other and then dead wives sisters and cousins!

However both OH ancestors and my ancestors lived in the same street in Bethnal Green in the late 1880's!

[Christine in Herts]

I do have chunks of my mother's family in Portsea / Southampton, and then OH's Gx2-g-father marrying a local girl while his RN ship was in at Portsmouth. It makes it quite confusing when I'm trying to remember for whom I'm looking at the RO!

Christine