General Chat

Some context. I moved around a lot. as a child - 12 moves before I turned 18 - dad was in the fleet air arm.
My ex moved around quite a bit - his dad was in the Navy.
We met when he came over from Cyprus (he was in the RAF) to see my sister's boyfriend, who was an old schoolmate.

His gran and my great gran were both from New Forest Traveller families.
They are both - on 2 seperate censuses, 10 years apart, living/working in the same farmhouse. That's a bit weird.

Even weirder, I have just found out that one of his ancestors- not from the traveller side - married one of my ancestors! My GGG grandmother's aunt.

When I was at Grammar school, I used to go around with a girl who lived in the New Forest, and insisted her family had lived there for generations. They may have done. However, she had an unusual name - Dowrick.
I found out that it was a Cornish name - my dad's family are Cornish going waaay back.
Well, I found out yesterday, that I have 'Dowricks' in my tree.It's a GGG grandmother's maiden name.

How weird, but how great, Maggie.
Amazing that your relatives even lived in the same farmhouse, at different times.

Dad's brother married a girl from a New Forest traveller family. I must ask my cousin, their daughter where they actually met, as I know they married in Yorkshire in wartime, when they were stationed there in the army.

Some years ago, I found that OH had an ancestral connection even though, like you there was no obvious link, at first.

https://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards/board/general_chat/thread/1322779

Wish I could find out how some of my actual DNA matches link :-S

It is an interesting journey Maggie. OH was born and grew up (in one place) in Devon.

I was born and grew up in Hampshire (in one place.).

My ancestors came from Somerset and Dorset among other places but mostly moved at some stage to Hampshire. His ancestors came from Dorset, Somerset and South Wales and moved to Devon. In the 18th century one of his ancestors and one of mine married (in Somerset). Neither of us knew of this before I started doing research.

It's amost like ancestral similarities pull people together.

As you say Maggie weird.

In 1911 the young man who eventually became my paternal grandfather was lodging in the same house as the young man who became my maternal cousin's grandfather.

They came from completely different parts of Scotland, but just happened to be working and lodging in the same small town at that time.

It feels odd to think that I know all about their later connection, whereas they thought they were only chance acquaintances.

I think that people who live in a particular area often work together, for instance, lots of my family worked for the Furness Railway, which operated round Morecambe Bay, where lots of my ancestors came from.
And then some of these workers would move to other railway centres, Crewe, Ardwick in Manchester, Sheffield.

And cities in particular had a lot of residents, again their employment might make them live in particular areas.

I have found that some of my ancestors who moved to Manchester for work used the same Church as OH's ancestors, who lived there.