Coincidences and the power of the internet

For a few years now I have been helping my Mother to discover the family tree, making use of the ever increasing resources on the internet. The results of all this are stored on the ancestry.co.uk website, as this is where most of the information comes from occasionally transferred to my page on genesreunited as that seems  to generate more contacts. Apart from my Mothers Maternal grandfather I have been reasonably successful tracing back to the early/mid 1700's.

Just after Christmas I recieved a contact via ancestry from a lady in Texas who had found a photo of her Grandmother (sister of my Fathers Grandmother) and my Fathers Great-Grandmother attached to my tree, enquiring if I had any more photos that may be of interest as she had little information on that side of the family as her Grandmother had died in 1908 while her father was still young. 

Last week, having finally got back from holiday in Spain my Mother got round to checking. Initially this caused some confusion as my Father claimed his Nan didn't have a sister, which shows how much notice he normally takes in the work my Mother and I have been doing. He did however remember the lady who contacted me, her parents and sister, however he hadn't realised that they were related and thought they were just close family friends.

Following the exchange of a few more emails, the biggest coincidence is that this lady's Mother and sister both live in Kettering, which is also where my parents have been for the last 25+ years. 

Also locally there are a couple of relatives from my Dad's Fathers side who he sees around quite often, who had also contacted me independently via one of the websites without realising who I was. Since all my fathers relatives were from around High Wycombe it is quite a coincidence that 50 years after moving away from his birthplace he should end up in  the same town as several of his relatives in a different part of the country.

Lee Davis : 10 Feb 2009 10:35 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem