What a coincidence

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Sue
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What a coincidence

Post by Sue »

As I have said on one of the forums recently, I have been doing the family tree for one of my friends for Christmas and having it printed by http://www.lulu.com. The book has been printed and is on its way.
Doing a bit of research stimulated me to look at mine again. I don't do much these days as I have most family lines back to the very early 1700s if not earlier. Earlier than that and I am forced into supposition rather than fact.
Anyway I did a search on Ancestry on Martha Edmundson and John Widdup 1785 ( and as all Widdup family researchers will know this is the starting point of most Widdup trees, although I have managed to take the tree much further back) I don' know, if anything, what I expected to find but when researching on Ancestry you can find links to other people researching the same and I always live in hope that some more photos may turn up relating to my direct ancestor John Roberts Widdup and siblings.
Now I am not from Rochdale, none of my family have ever lived here ( since 1786). I was born in Nottingham, spent most of my life in Chester-le-Street and went to University in Salford. On graduating we moved to Rochdale, nice countryside, cheap houseing , low rates! Mean while Mum and Dad and my younger sister had moved back to Burnley where Dad was born (He moved away in 1927)
So back to my research. It was around 2001 that I discovered that John Roberts Widdup was my great grandfather and probably a year latter when I discovered that his gg grandfather was born in Rochdale in 1786, the first born of John and Martha. Now I thought THAT was a coincidence, but what about this one
My friends name is Gaffiney and one of the family trees that I found that connected with Martha and John was a Gaffiney tree. I contacted the person, as I was very curious about this link.
LO AND BEHOLD this Gaffiney tree was the tree of my friends husband ( I didn't do this branch for her as she said her husbands cousin had already done it) In fact it was this very tree that my friend had told me about.
An online converstion took place. I now find that my friends husbands cousin married into the Widdup family to a Jack Wilkinson. The direct line back to Martha and John is to a son Thomas, brother of my 5times great grandfather William (Rochdale 1786). This husband and wife were not from Rochdale either. My friend and I are not related but our families are closely connected. Now that is a coincidence
If you keep searching you will find it
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Wendyf
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Re: What a coincidence

Post by Wendyf »

That is amazing Sue.
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Bodger
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Re: What a coincidence

Post by Bodger »

Re coincidence, about 1970 i was involved in researching the possibility of setting up plastic moulding company in Connemara, one of the persons involved was a Michael Ringrose,fast forward to 2002, i started to do genealogy on my family tree, lo and behold i discovered on my maternal side a Ringrose family, including a Michael, and yes the person i had worked with nearly forty years before was my 2nd. cousin, Michael had been in America before coming to Connemara, so i do'nt know the odds of our chance meeting back then, we are now in regular touch !!
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Sue
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Re: What a coincidence

Post by Sue »

Thats another good coincidence
If you keep searching you will find it
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Stanley
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Re: What a coincidence

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I love coincidences! I've told you about Janet hiring the same bricklayer in Oz that I hired to build the back wall at Ellenroad. He told her that a bloke from Barlick hired him and his dad to build the biggest wall they had ever done, 60ft high. He dropped cork-legged when Janet told him where the wall was and that the bloke was her dad!
In about 1999 I was down at the Black Country Museum with my kids from Carleton college. We had split up and me and the professor in charge were ambling back across the site for a cup of tea when we saw a gaggle of men and women in suits coming down the path, some sort of official delegation. We stepped onto the grass to let them past and suddenly a man detached himself from the group, ran across shouting in Russian and welded himself to my professor! I've never seen a bloke so surprised in my life! It turned out they had met 20 years before at an Economics Seminar in Moscow and the Russian bloke had remembered. All the world to go at and their paths coincided that day in Dudley. You couldn't make it up.
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Sue
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Re: What a coincidence

Post by Sue »

Those are both amazing Stanley.
If you keep searching you will find it
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Stanley
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Re: What a coincidence

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Here's another one for you.

One morning 50 years ago I was on my way to Lincoln and Carleton Dairy where it was always a half past five tip in the morning. On this particular morning in early autumn I got to Bawtry and as I dropped down into the Vale I ran into dense fog. This wasn’t industrial fog, it was nature’s best, white, thick and consistent. I crept along at about 4mph. All I could see was the kerb about ten feet in front of the wagon. I soon realised I had a companion, another wagon was following me and had enough sense to let me do the work. Shortly after Bawtry there is a steep climb to Gringley on the Hill and the fog vanished as we climbed. From the top you could see an unbroken sea of white stretching as far as the eye could see and we plunged into it again. I crept along in this fashion for about an hour and a half and in the end I pulled up to rest my eyes and neck muscles. I got out of the cab and the driver behind jumped down as well, we agreed that it was a lousy morning, that I had done a wonderful job and that it was time he got in front and gave me a rest. “Where are we?” he said. I told him I reckoned we were somewhere near the Sheffield road end and that if I was right there was a big ‘rhine’ or drain on the left near the road. “We’ll soon find that out.” he said and picked up a two inch stone from the side of the road and threw it into the fog. There was the most horrendous crash of breaking glass that seemed to go on for ever! I looked at him and he looked at me and he said “Christ, what do we do?” I told him that I didn’t know what he was going to do but I was going to piss off as fast as possible. I jumped in the cab and set off for the dairy. Later that morning on my way back empty, it was a beautiful sunny day and as I passed the point where the rhine bent away from the road I saw a bungalow with the front window boarded up with new plywood! God knows what the inhabitants thought had happened, I hadn’t thrown the stone and it seemed silly to interfere so I drove on. Twenty years later I was having a cup of tea in the Coatsgate Café at Beattock and I realised that a driver on the other side of the room was watching me. In the end I got up and went over and it turned out to be the same driver that had broken the window, he had recognised me. He was with some mates and we had a happy half hour retelling the story. What were the odds against us seeing each other again and even more surprising, that he recognised me after two minutes conversation in the fog? By the way, he had never passed the bungalow and didn't know what he'd broken!
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Marilyn
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Re: What a coincidence

Post by Marilyn »

Febby discovered an old bike chain in the shed, that has a three number code. He has spent hours, sat wriggling the numbers and trying to get the thing open. Finally he declared today that he had exhausted every possibility, having methodically gone through every possible number combination.
'Give it here' I said.
Got it open FIRST TRY!!
(total fluke, but he's a bit dark now and not saying much!)
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Stanley
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Re: What a coincidence

Post by Stanley »

Game set and match to Maz..... (He'll make you pay for it....)
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Marilyn
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Re: What a coincidence

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....Aye....(sigh)
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