I can relate - here's my story of serendipity: I met a woman through one of my genealogy postings who turned out tobe a third cousin. Our great grandmothers were sisters. My new cousin and hersisters had been searching for ancestors unsuccessfully for years but had beenlooking for the wrong surname. They did not know until one of their aunts madea deathbed confession, that their grandmother had changed her name after hermarriage had failed – seemingly in an attempt to hide the children from theirfather. So armed with the correct surname, the search for their grandfather andprevious generations was on. It was at this point that they found me. Turns out, her grandfather was married three times (1895, 1912 and 1929 and there werechildren from all three unions). Mynew-found cousin is descended from a daughter of the second marriage. Then the pieces finally started to fall together. An examination of hisCanadian WW1 military file indicated her grandfather had intended to buy propertynear Sutton, Quebec. We assumed he may have died there and a search of a Quebecrecords website verified it. With a death date I was able to find a newspaperobituary which provided information on the funeral, burial and names of surviving wife(#3) and children. Since we had never met face to face, we decided that a jointtrip to find the grave would be a fun adventure. We picked a time that we could both get off work, shedrove to Ottawa, stayed a few days with us and together weset out for Mansonville, Quebec and the tombstone hunt. We found a cemetery on both sides of the main street of the town - looked high and low forthe stone and came up empty. Since it was getting on for 12:30, we decided tostop for lunch, recharge and see if there were any other cemeteries in thearea. We stopped in a small cafe and began talking to the older woman who served us,told her what we were doing and asked her if she knew the surname we werelooking for. She said she wasn't 'from there' but her husband was and went toask him if he knew the name. He came out, sat down with us and announced thathe had gone to school with someone with the exact name as my third cousin’sgrandfather - this would be the son from marriage #3. He remembered hisschoolmate’s father as being old enough to be his grandfather (quite likely Iguess when you get to offspring from marriage #3 – he would have been 54 whenhe married for the third time). The gentleman assured us that we were lookingin the right cemetery, so we went back, with instructions to focus on theProtestant side where, after careful examination of all tombstones plus ground plates, we finallyfound a small bronze plaque in the ground (right name and rightdates), partially covered with grass. We congratulated ourselves, cleaned offthe plaque, took some pictures and began the 4 hour drive back to Ottawa. It was only the next night after my cousin had returned home and I was enteringthe info into my database that I happened to reread his obituary andimmediately got goosebumps. We found his grave on August 20th at 2:00 pm - theEXACT date and time of his funeral 53 years earlier! Patty McGregor Ottawa, Canada

Now that's just plain scary! Harold Henderson, Certified Genealogist ® midwestroots.net Genealogical writing and editing Current research and writing: Mozley 1800-1950 England/PA/WI Lowe 1770-1950 England/NYC/IL Flint/Gedney 1800-1950 IL/MO Thrall 1792-1934 VT/OH/IL On Thu, Mar 16, 2017 at 2:02 PM, PATRICIA MCGREGOR <pmcgr@rogers.com> wrote: > I can relate - here's my story of serendipity: > > I met a woman through one of my genealogy postings who turned out tobe a > third cousin. Our great grandmothers were sisters. My new cousin and > hersisters had been searching for ancestors unsuccessfully for years but > had beenlooking for the wrong surname. They did not know until one of their > aunts madea deathbed confession, that their grandmother had changed her > name after hermarriage had failed – seemingly in an attempt to hide the > children from theirfather. So armed with the correct surname, the search > for their grandfather andprevious generations was on. It was at this point > that they found me. Turns out, her grandfather was married three times > (1895, 1912 and 1929 and there werechildren from all three unions). > Mynew-found cousin is descended from a daughter of the second marriage. > > Then the pieces finally started to fall together. An examination of > hisCanadian WW1 military file indicated her grandfather had intended to buy > propertynear Sutton, Quebec. We assumed he may have died there and a search > of a Quebecrecords website verified it. With a death date I was able to > find a newspaperobituary which provided information on the funeral, burial > and names of surviving wife(#3) and children. Since we had never met face > to face, we decided that a jointtrip to find the grave would be a fun > adventure. We picked a time that we could both get off work, shedrove to > Ottawa, stayed a few days with us and together weset out for Mansonville, > Quebec and the tombstone hunt. > > We found a cemetery on both sides of the main street of the town - looked > high and low forthe stone and came up empty. Since it was getting on for > 12:30, we decided tostop for lunch, recharge and see if there were any > other cemeteries in thearea. > > We stopped in a small cafe and began talking to the older woman who served > us,told her what we were doing and asked her if she knew the surname we > werelooking for. She said she wasn't 'from there' but her husband was and > went toask him if he knew the name. He came out, sat down with us and > announced thathe had gone to school with someone with the exact name as my > third cousin’sgrandfather - this would be the son from marriage #3. He > remembered hisschoolmate’s father as being old enough to be his grandfather > (quite likely Iguess when you get to offspring from marriage #3 – he would > have been 54 whenhe married for the third time). The gentleman assured us > that we were lookingin the right cemetery, so we went back, with > instructions to focus on theProtestant side where, after careful > examination of all tombstones plus ground plates, we finallyfound a small > bronze plaque in the ground (right name and rightdates), partially covered > with grass. We congratulated ourselves, cleaned offthe plaque, took some > pictures and began the 4 hour drive back to Ottawa. > > It was only the next night after my cousin had returned home and I was > enteringthe info into my database that I happened to reread his obituary > andimmediately got goosebumps. We found his grave on August 20th at 2:00 pm > - theEXACT date and time of his funeral 53 years earlier! > Patty McGregor > Ottawa, Canada > > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > TRANSITIONAL-GENEALOGISTS-FORUM-request@rootsweb.com with the word > 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message