Genealogy Chat

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

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 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

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

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 !

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 incredible Claire--what is your view? just mathmatics of probability---or----something unknown. Arfermo.

I like to think its something unknown :O)

I think your stories are great............ call in intuition, gut feeling or whatever. I definatley believe that there are greater forces at work.

De ja Vu, how can that be explained??

My story isn't of meeting a long lost relative/friend or someone similar, but meeting someone I never knew..... but I did???

To cut the story short, about 15 years ago my husband was in hospital, I was just leaving after visiting him. I came to the main exit where a gentleman, maybe 20 years older than myself looked at me, at that instance I knew I knew him, and I knew in the look of his eyes that he knew me, we held a gaze for a few minutes and then I left.

I bitterley regret leaving that day, I KNOW I knew him, I so wished I had spoken to him........... but being a young girl of 21, I was too shy.

To this day I could describe every detail of him, there was such a strong draw there that I strongly beleive I had met him before and knew him well.

You maybe thinking, well I bet it was an old friend of her parents or something alike............... 15 years of racking my brain, asking and describing him to my parents.... nobody the family knew!!!!

Dee xx

Dee,

I hate it when i have those feelings...i usually put it down to having met them through my job...but then again it could be something else!

De Ja Vu is the strangest thing ever and i get it so often!

Claire

had a couple of coincidences with my name

was admitted to hospital late one night as an emergency - arrived at my bed to find my name Ann Sullivan already on it - then discovered the lady who had just vacated it was also Ann Sullivan!!!

In M & S one afternoon heard over the P>A> system - Will Mrs Sullivan please come to Customer Services - panic set in as I raced there to discover another Mrs Sullivan beat me to it - she had lost her bus pass. We walked out together and I said "My name is Ann" "So's mine she said" She then said "I know another Ann Sullivan, she writes lots of letters to the local newspaper" "That's me" I said. "Glad to have met you at last she said - I'm always getting the blame for them

Talking of De Ja Vu. Does anyone remember the Bloxham Tapes?---recordings of people hypnotised into transgretion ? is that the right word? where they can remember previous lives, and actually relive scenes from them while being recorded. Obviously---this is an area that is wide open to charletans and ridicule BUT. One example in particular was very strange, and as far as I know, has never been explained satisfactorily. A man under regretion said he was a jewish moneylender in York, during the 12th century I believe. It was a period of very hard times, bad crop yealds, much starvation. He was being chased by a huge mob of locals. (these pograms--were common when things were bad, and the Jews were always blamed for it, and beaten or killed) He ran into a city church--can't think of its name--but still intact today, and hid in a chamber under the floor of the 'Transcept' I think. Anyway. At the time of the recordings, a check was made of the Church for it's buried chamber, and according to old plans of the church, and local clerical knowledge---there was'nt one there--never had been. By amazing coincidence, restoration work was being carried out on this church, and a few days after the recording had been made, workmen strengthing the stonework under the transcept found a hidden chamber, patially filled in, which clearly had never been in use for many centuries. NOBODY alive, or ANY previously known history of this church had revealed this chamber before------So he could not have researched it beforehand (no google then). Ps. If moneylenders were murdered or just died in those days, the dept would die with them. A nice incentive to clobber them. When the whole town was owing money, nobody is going to sqwark.

Hi Arfermo,

You keeping well???

I would love to be transgressed, I do strong beleive that there is something for us after we pass.

Another little story.......... I met a young chap when I was 17, he was 23, but very old for his years.......... so hence I called him Uncle Dan!!!

I had started to see my future husband about 12 months later, uncle Dan then told me that it was his twin brother... well I fell about laughing, twins. they looked nothing alike!!! I then married my chap (uncle Dan's twin) and guess what.... Uncle Dan is the uncle to my children!!!


Dee x

Hi Afermo - Arnall Bloxham lived just up the road from me here in Cardiff - a fascinating man - he had a lovely thatched birdhouse in his front garden which he made himself - no one had taught him how to thatch - he said he just knew it!!! He wrote a fascinating book which I read called "Who was Anne Ockenden" a friend of his who he took back through about eight different lives. She had been both man and woman in previous lives and it was his theory that a man who was gay had been a female more times in his past life than a man, and vice versa for women - something to think about!!!

Regarding the Bloxham Tapes and his writings regression. I think it was deemed to be fabricated. Although I vaguely remember reading it years ago.

I also believe in De ja Vu or fate whatever you want to call it.

But for sheer coincidence. A friends of mind who used to live in my village had a good friends who emigrated to Oz i also had a friends who imigrated to OZ. Yes you have guessed it. The two of them met up for coffee and on discussionabout England the conversations went......my friends lives in ..........village so does mine said the other friend.

So why they were having a coffee down under the english contingency were having a good old gossip in the UK.

Hope that makes sense