Cyclops has mentioned serendipity as playing a part in family history research. I have such a story if anyone is interested!

I started on my family history back in the early 1980’s. My father vaguely recalled his grandmother had a sister who had emigrated in the 1860’s to Pennsylvania. Her husband went to find work in the coal mines there. In our collection of family photos we have one solitary photo of my dad’s great aunt’s daughter together with her family. There was no date on it but from the clothing style we guessed early 1900’s. We knew her married name, the names of the husband and children were handwritten on the back of the photo, and the photographic studio was in a town called Nanticoke, Pennsylvania.

In the mid 1980’s I had to attend a 3 day business conference in New Jersey, which was the first time I had ever been to the USA. I took advantage of the trip to book a flight on the Friday night so that I could have the weekend free before the conference started on the Monday. New Jersey is adjacent to Pennsylvania, so my dad suggested that if I had time I could visit this place called Nanticoke and see if I could find any trace of the great aunt’s family. As our family have strong connections with the Methodist church he thought it might be a good idea to seek out the Methodist church in that town and enquire there for a start.

To cut a long story short, I found the main Methodist church, checked the Sunday service time and arrived about half an hour early. I showed the photo to the guy on the door but he was not able to help as he did not know of a family with that surname. However when he read the names on the back of the photo he said that there was an elderly lady by the name of Eva who attended there but she was very old and did not come every week. I waited on the off chance that this particular Sunday this lady would turn up, which she duly did. I showed her the photo and she burst into tears saying “where did you get that photo – that’s me second from the right!”

Serendipity or what!! From that chance one-off meeting I met many of her relatives who were able to fill me in with so many details about our American connections. But that’s another story….