Genealogy Chat

Hello all,

My dad was in the Royal Navy from 1965 to 1973 and during this time he was in OZ.

One evening he was walking down a dirt track on his way to the local pub when a 4x4 stopped and offered him a lift. On the way into the town my dad and this guy started chatting and the driver said i recognise that accent are you from the midlands? My dad said yes Birmingham, the guy then went on to tell my dad that he was originally from Birmingham but had moved out to OZ. On further chatting they discovered that they had only lived around the corner from each other and were the same age...this gets better... they then discovered that they had been born on the same day in the same hospital!

:O)

Thats an amazing story Christine--and takes some beating. I bought a book a few years ago all about coincidence. It posed the question--is there some unseen/unknown force at work, or is it all a mathematical probability ? To my disappointment, it arrived at the latter conclusion. When I read the book again awhile ago, I personally, was not convinced of it. It's not just WISHFUL thinking, it's just that some of the cases quoted are SO complicated and bizzare, I could not accept the authors view. An example NOt in the book (amazingly), was told on radio2 some years ago. I'll try and be brief and accurate. I think it went something like this. A northern couple sold their flat and emigrated to Auckland New Zealand. A year or so later, they booked a table at a posh --revolving--restaurant (much in demand) at the top of a that city's Huge observation Tower. A young couple came and sat at the next table. They got talking, and it was revealed that they too had come from the same town in England, but were on holiday visiting relations. Futher talk revealed that the flat that the emigrants used to live in---turned out to be the very same flat that the young visitors had moved into just a few months before. Remember, this is as far away from their home in the uk they could possibly be. The restaurant had a long waiting list, so being there on the same night at the same time --next to each other???? WOW.

My brother first started tracing our family, years ago, through an old service medal we had at home - researched at Kew. Our G.g.grandfather was on the HMS Genoa in the Battle of Navarino (fought in a bay in Greece) in 1827. He was from Cornwall.

Some years later, I found myself at a summer party with a friend, at the home of a business client, in SW London. We knew no-one else there. We stood on the lawn, trying to make small talk with a man and a woman (who were not together). The woman told us she was a researcher at the Records Office in Kew, and had just finished researching the history of a ship called The Black Dog for a client. The man was stunned - his ancestor served on that ship. On further conversation, it turned out that his ancestor also served on the HMS Genoa in the Battle of Navarino, alongside my g.g.grandfather!

Edit: Have just been talking to my brother about this. He says that the first ship was actually The Black Joke (not Dog). It was used in the African slave trade. Some of the African boys they had picked up appeared on the ship's muster. Because they didn't speak English, The ship's company had obviously given them names - I think he said one was Albatross and another Sea Breeze! You can see these original ship's muster books at Kew.

That's right MadMeg--it could be the -Tooth Fairy--with a bag of tanners--or should that be £1 coins. Arfermo

Wow, some of your stories are so uncanny.

Sadly we didn't have a coffee, I was on my way to a dental appointment for a broken tooth - otherwise I rarely visit the town in which we met.

The true story is, of course, much longer, but you get the drift. It was sheer coincidence, the odds a million to one, that we should have met.

The moral of this story is - never fear a visit to the dentist, you never know who you might meet on the way!

Margaret

Several years ago, I was visiting a churchyard in a tiny Shropshire village. There was myself and another lady who entered through a gate at the opposite side of the church. We both walked silently around , looking for relatives graves, and yes, you've guessed, we ended up stood in front of the same headstone, and found we were related.

This is not quite the same--but still spooky. i was walking through the 'Horsefair' shopping area of Bristol some years ago, where it is below road level. for no apparent reason at all--thoughts of my nephew and his image came to mind, and i thought, that would be odd if I saw him here--You've guest it--within seconds, out of the underpass tunnel he came with a bunch of his friends. OoOoooOoOooH !

It is indeed a small world.

Couple of years ago I found that one of the Church Wardens here was brought up in the same village as I went to secondary school in, and that her brother who still lives there is known to the family I worked for before moving out here. And to cap it all, a couple of weeks ago, we discovered that I was in the same year (same school) as her nephew. Don't remember him though.

Rosalind

Well Madmeg, I believe in Angels and sometimes when things unexpected like this happen, i like to believe that someone "up there" orchestrated it for us! Linda

What a lovely surprise for you to put a face to a name. Hope you had a coffee and shared your thoughts


Never met anyone yet but Im not in England so highly unlikely

Well how about this for a coincidence. The history of the family is too long to bore you all with, but suffice to say that I have found a definite connection with a Person X, Person Y and myself through the Fish family. I have never met Person X (living in America) or Person Y (Living in Lancaster), indeed only discovered the existence of Person Y earlier this year. Person X and I have long been in contact.

Well. I pulled up in a car park today ready to go to the dentist, when a lady approached me and asked if I was local, and could I direct her to a paper mill. I wasn't sure, so we walked together to the Heritage Centre. We chatted along they way, got on really well, and then suddenly she dropped the bombshell. She was my Person Y!!!!!!

I can't believe the coincidence that let us to be in the same place at the same time today.

Anyone else had such an eperience?

Margaret