Synchronicity – GenealogyAtHeart.com

A Little German Synchronicity

I’m back from my travels to France and Germany where I spent a week researching my husband and my ancestry in the Alsace-Lorraine region. I’m going to conclude my October series on synchronicity with another weird encounter that happened to me in a castle.

A little back story is needed to fully appreciate this odd encounter…

I’ve always known I was part German. My maiden name was Leininger so it was a no brainer figuring the ethnicity out. However, names alone don’t tell the whole story and the region from where my German ancestors once lived was fraught with turmoil for generations. I recently learned that some of it was from within the community – noble vs. peasants, but it also occurred with outsiders invading, such as during the 30 year war and Napoleon.

My paternal side never spoke about their heritage. Perhaps because it was too painful to recall or because they just weren’t great communicators. When my first child was born I asked my dad for genealogical info to put in the baby book and got the response, “When I’m dead, you’ll get the book.” My response, “Book, what book? Why do I have to wait ‘til your dead?”

He then informed me that he had two books that had been written by a family member about the Leiningers, which were also once known as Leiningen, and didn’t want to give me the books as he still referred to them occasionally. Like I wrote earlier, not great communicators!

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the books when he died as my stepmother refused to give them to me. I offered to pay for her time packing them and shipping but she said she didn’t have the time to do it. I turned to the internet and did receive an electronic copy of the first book from the author who was stationed in Germany at the time. Five years after my father’s death, when I stopped at my stepmother’s home after burying my mother, she produced the books and several photo albums.

The genealogies were not sourced and had a lot of errors. In fact, the second book was basically a fix it for the first as so many relatives had written to correct the wrong info. I used the book to do a surname study through “My Main Tree” on Ancestry.com as there were several lines mentioned that didn’t connect. This was before DNA.

I was not in contact with any close family members as it wasn’t a family that maintained ties. I don’t read or write German and with work, family, and other commitments, put the German research aside. Someday, I thought, I’d go back to it.

Someday became a year ago in June when I made a post on Whova, a conference app, asking if anyone had any info about the following surnames: Bollenbacher, Harbaugh, Kable, Kettering, Kuhn, Leininger, Mahler. One man from Germany responded and I’ve blogged about his help previously here and here.

Gerhard was the first family member I ever met on any of those surnames outside of my dad, grandfather, two aunts and three first cousins who were Leiningers. There are pictures of me with a great aunt but I don’t recall much as I was just 3 when the visit occurred.

Gerhard introduced me to two other conference attendees that were Kettingers. None of us were close (7^th cousins). While doing research last spring in Germany, Gerhard happened to meet a 96 year old woman named Irma who was providing Gerhard with an oral history of her town, Bedesbach. Gerhard noticed a photo on the wall in her living room and inquired about it. She told Gerhard it was taken in the 1980s when she had attended a Bollenbacher family reunion in northeastern Indiana. Gerhard told her about me as he had looked at my tree and knew I was descended from the Bollenbachers. She asked him to get in touch with me and check on people she had visited in Indiana. I blogged about that meeting here.

Something told me it was time to visit the Palatinate and see what I could find about my ancestors’ lives there. With Gerhard’s help after reviewing the little info I had found about them, my husband and I traveled to Frankfurt and then by car to the region of interest.

Within an hour and a half of landing, I was taken to what had once been a castle of a noble Leiningen. That’s me at the top and I do have a story to share but am saving that for another time. Rita, a friend of Gerhard’s what was accompanying us, told me that the next castle from the Leiningens were the Frankensteins, of Mary Shelley fame. One of them had been an alchemist. Perfect family info to learn on a fall October day!

Gerhard had a surprise for me every day and I’ll be blogging about the hints and tricks that I learned in researching this area beginning next week.

The creepy part of the story, however, occurred on a Saturday night. Gerhard took us to a castle that supposedly was not associated with my family. We were going to have dinner with a group of attendees at a genealogical conference that was being held there that weekend. Another genealogist that I have worked with, Roland Geiger, was putting the conference on and thought it would be a good idea if we stopped by.

Remember, I don’t read, speak or UNDERSTAND much German but I wanted to see Roland so I was game. There were six chairs at each table in the dining room. Gerhard, Rita, my husband, Roland, and I took five of the seats. An attendee decided to join us. We had a nice dinner and then moved up to the bar area where more mingling was to occur. The tables there only sat four so Gerhard, Rita, my husband and I filled up a table. The woman that had joined us at dinner had some questions for me about genealogy practices so we pulled up another chair. On her iPad she brought up her Wiki Tree. I told her I don’t use that because my tree is too large to upload to them and I don’t have time to do it piecemeal. She explained that she prefers Wiki Tree to other companies because of the sources that are found on the trees. I can’t disagree with her but I wanted to show her how well sourced my Ancestry.com tree was. She brought it up on her iPad. I showed her my dad and grandfather’s info, then decided to show her the pedigree view. That’s when it got creepy.

Alesandra-Brigitte became very quiet and just stared at the tree. I encouraged her to click on any of the names to see the details. She blinked, looked at me seriously and said, “I’m a Bollenbacher, too.”

In seconds, we discovered we are 6^th cousins. I told her I would be meeting another 6^th cousin who was 96 the next day for lunch. She had no knowledge of the other woman who lived close to her.

So, by just dropping by for dinner at a castle in the middle of nowhere I connected with a distant family member who I was able to help connect with another family member that lived close to her. Simply amazing!

I only regret that I didn’t have more time to talk to other attendees as I suspect I was related to most of them.

Genealogy is both weird and wonderful! On this Halloween, I hope the spirits enable you to make some meaningful family connections.

More Psychic Roots Book Review

Genealogy At Heart’s second blog article today is a book review of More Psychic Roots: Further Adventures in Serendipity & Intuition in Genealogy, (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1997). You can read here about my first blog today which covered Henry Z. Jones, Jr.’s Psychic Roots: Serendipity & Intuition in Genealogy (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1993).

Again, here’s my disclaimer – I’ve read both books several years ago but not for the purpose of a book review. After my October 1^st blog, October Genealogical Coincidences Part 1, was posted, I was contacted by a reader who requested I write the book reviews. I thought that was a wonderful way to end my series. I received no monetary compensation for these reviews, however, I did receive a free copy of both books.

Although Further Adventures is the sequel, the books may be read in any order. There are nearly 300 more uncanny genealogical experiences highlighted. Unlike Psychic Roots, the stories in Further Adventures were obtained from family historians who had either read the prior work or seen an episode of Unsolved Mysteries that featured Jones and several genealogists whose stories had been highlighted in the first book. Jones refers to the self-reporters as “grassroots” genealogists who bravely shared their odd experiences. He acknowledges that there are those who mock others who have had strange incidences occur, likely because the events happen unexpectedly and can’t be reproduced at will. He reminds the reader that many unexplained phenomena were once considered supernatural but as science progressed, are now understood.

Further Adventures is subdivided into different types of occurrences, such as dreams, researching at the archives, visiting a bookstore/cemetery/ancestral locale, mistakenly ordering the wrong material, or looking in an unlikely location, such as reading the first book, recognizing a surname, and finding a distant family contact with whom to connect. In the back of both books is a surname index. One of the surnames that I research, Harbaugh, was found in the sequel; I was familiar with the ancestor but not the contributor who has a different last name. I also recognized two stories included by one of my blog readers, Linda Stufflebean. Perhaps, you too will recognize a connection.

Further Adventures contains more than just odd reports, there are solid genealogical practices noted. My favorite is a story of a father and daughter’s attempt to find a remote cemetery location of an ancestor. They were thrilled to report to a family member that they accomplished their goal only to be asked by the relative, “Why didn’t you ask me?” Clearly, the importance of doing family interviews could save us time and travel.

The book also reminds us of the need to examine records in the counties surrounding where our ancestors once lived. This is definitely a sound practice. The value of documenting sources, staying abreast of current practices, and double-checking all evidence is emphasized.

Another recommendation is to trust our intuition. That little voice that nudges you to examine a hunch just might be correct. Flexibility in our research plan, a positive attitude and a sense of humor can lead to discovering the unexpected. As Jones points out, our immigrant ancestors gambled “their lives on the unknown” and took a great risk. Getting out of our comfort zone by picking a book at random might just lead us to a new discovery.

I especially like the idea “that when you help someone else, the favor is always repaid in full measure – maybe not by the recipient, but from somewhere a bonanza falls into your eager hands!” p. 186. I can attest to that.

This work does focus more on ghostly encounters and unconventional techniques, such as automatic writing, than the prior book. It was emphasized by a contributor, however, that serendipity does not come without research.

Although DNA was not as prevalent at the time the book was written, there is a broad mention of it. The work of philosopher Emmanuel Kant regarding gaining a priori knowledge is attributed to perhaps genetic programming we do not yet fully understand. LaVonne Harper Stiffler’s work on genetic connections of adoptees to their birth parents was also explored.

Jones’ final chapter is a mini-memoir of his relationships gained through his careers as an entertainer and a genealogist. It is here where the reader learns the root of Jones’ personal philosophy and genealogical practices. A touching tribute to his longtime collaborator, Carla Mittelstaedt Kubaseck, concludes the book.

I think it is fitting to house both of Jones’ works on my bookshelf next to Mills’ Evidence Explained. How does one cite the illogical occurrences that led us through a brick wall? I will ponder that on another day. For now, I appreciate all of the contributors, and especially, Jones, for revealing their strange encounters. I am also very thankful to have experienced many of my own coincidences and synchronicities. Personally, I don’t particularly care how they occur, I just hope they keep on coming!

Psychic Roots Book Review

With the extra hour you gain from this weekend’s time change, Genealogy At Heart has a 2-for-1 special today! As I conclude my synchronicity series I’ll be reviewing two books that are filled with genealogical coincidences. The first blog will cover Henry “Hank” Z. Jones, Jr.’s Psychic Roots: Serendipity & Intuition in Genealogy (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1993). The second blog today is Jones’ follow-up, More Psychic Roots: Further Adventures in Serendipity & Intuition in Genealogy (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1997).

Here’s my disclaimer – I’ve read both books several years ago but not for the purpose of a book review. After my October 1^st blog, October Genealogical Coincidences Part 1, was posted, I was contacted by a reader who requested I write the book reviews. I thought that was a wonderful way to end my series. I received no monetary compensation for these reviews, however, I did receive a free copy of both books.

Psychic Roots is a compilation of professional genealogists’ stories of their odd experiences while performing research. Most occurrences happened when the ancestor was a family member, however, some transpired while research was being performed for clients. One of the book’s strengths is its reliance on input from professional genealogists, many renowned such as current or former fellows of the American Society of Genealogists, such as Henry Lines Jacobus, Helen F. M. Leary, John Insley Coddington, and Francis “Jim” Dallett. GRIP co-founder Elissa Scalise Powell is also included. Jones contacted 300 genealogists requesting they share any unusual experiences encountered while researching. Over 200 replied and many of their responses are contained in the book, including a few who had no strange occurrences at all.

The book begins with a tale of how Jones got bitten by the genealogy bug as a youth. Like many of us, genealogy was Jones’ second career. Some of you may recall seeing him on the Tennessee Ernie Ford Show, in Disney’s Blackbeard’s Ghost, or on various television situation comedies before he left entertainment for family history.

Jones is a fellow of the American Society of Genealogists. Psychic Roots was not his first authored work. He is well-known for The Palatine Families of Ireland (1965) and the two-volume The Palatine Families of New York – 1710 (1985) for which he received the prestigious Jacobus Award. It was a result of those works that Psychic Roots came about; Jones could not let go of his passion for the emigrating Palatinates and he desired to explore why he was called to spend much of his life investigating them. Upon reflection, he recalled the many strange occurrences that led him to research findings.

Jones stresses “scientific methods” or as today, we would follow the guidelines in the Genealogy Standards. He delved into other disciplines to better understand the unexplainable events he had experienced. His research took him to the works of author Horace Walpole, who purportedly coined the word serendipity, psychologist Carl Jung’s collective unconscious, chemist Dr. Louis Pasteur’s view of chance, physician Dr. Jonas Salk’s intuitive thinking, physicist Wolfgang Pauli’s study of non-physical and non-causal events in nature, physicist Albert Einstein’s belief in intuition, and NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell’s ESP studies. He attended lectures by individuals, such as Ramond Bayless and Dr. Elizabeth McAdams, who investigated psychics. Jones examined Dr. Raymond Moody and Dr. Elizabeth Kubler Ross’ works on near-death experiences. He also looked for precedence in the field of genealogy and found it in “Randall-Pease-Hutchinson-Warner: A Study in Serendipity,” an article published in The American Genealogist by Winifred Lovering Holman in 1957. He includes a bibliography for further reading.

The types of nonrational experiences are explored in depth by chapters, divided by synchronicity, numeracy, intuition, and genetic memory.

The title, Psychic Roots, is a bit deceiving. If you’re expecting woo-woo, spine-tingling creepiness you aren’t going to find it here. You are more apt to have a belly laugh. This is one area that I think makes the book so successful; when dealing with sensitive situations, appropriate laughter can be useful and some of the stories are hilarious.

I found this book is much more than just the uncanny experiences of genealogists. There are many other discoveries to be made in Psychic Roots. For example, I found it interesting how Helen Leary researched; she did not use Write as You Go. No spoiler alert here; you’ll have to get a copy to find out her method.

Henry Jones reinforces other tips that genealogists can find helpful, such as researching the FAN Club, although that term wasn’t used at the time the book was published, collaborating with colleagues, and boots-on-the-ground research. If you attended Thomas Jones’ 2023 National Genealogical Society lecture, “It Gets Even Better Offline,” he stated in one of his examples that “This incident also illustrates how serendipity can play a role in genealogical research and in my experience there are more serendipitous findings in genealogical research offline than there are online.” The tales in Psychic Roots support that belief.

I could relate to many of the stories as I’ve found myself in similar frustrating situations when hitting a brick wall. One memorable account related how a researcher, in desperation, began speaking to a photo of the son of the man she was unable to find information about. Her family thought she was losing touch with reality until a few months later, after repeated requests directed at the photo, the information she sought was found. If only I had a photo of my Thomas Duer! Jones believes that both thinking and feeling about your ancestor, along with immersing yourself in their customs and societal norms is what leads to successful finds.

The book is a quick read and difficult to put down. While reading it I did have one strange occurrence. Somehow, my new smartphone decided to change my keyboard to Deutsch. I have no idea how that happened. It could have been a fluke or, it could have been Jones’ Palatine families wanting to communicate. Who knows what odd situation will happen to you when you pick up a copy! Let me know, I’d love to hear from you.

October Genealogical Coincidences Part 5

Clip from one of my many FamilySearch.org emails

This is the 5th blog in my personal synchronicity series. If you find what I’ve written weird, I will definitely agree with you. I can’t make stuff like this up!

I had put genealogy on a back burner with the move and after July 5^th, temporarily stopped accepting clients. My last day of research in Tampa had been a duesy! I started at the Circuit Court looking for property records and found a very interesting document for my Client. I was going to then go to the University of South Florida, on the other end of town, to look at funeral home records. I decided it would be nice if I took pictures of the former home and business of the Client’s grandfather since I had to pass them anyway.

I was turning onto Florida Avenue and looking for an address that had been changed over the years. I was trying to judge the location I needed from a business that had been in the same place. Out of nowhere, a car was on my tail so I quickly turned into the first drive I saw. I stopped at the side of the building and determined the place I was looking for was directly across the street.

As I got out of the car I noticed a man looking at me with a confused expression on his face. I decided to let him know I was a family historian who was only going to park for a second to take a picture for someone who lived in New England and whose grandpa used to live across the street. The man said, “And then you’re going to take care of your flat.”

Huh? What flat? Evidently, I had turned so quickly that I hit a sharp spot on a curb and sliced open my front passenger-side tire. Oh no! I was supposed to be at USF in 15 minutes. I am not good at changing tires. The man understood my panicked look and said it was a good thing it happened where it did. What was he talking about?

Turns out I did this in front of a tire store. Weirder still, the Client’s grandfather had owned a tire store and I had just taken a picture of that building. The kind man put on my spare and I made it just a few minutes late to my next appointment.

When I got home I told hubby what happened and he said he was glad as he had meant to tell me he was concerned that my tires would not make the long trip from Florida to Indiana. We had new tires put on the following day. Someone in the universe was definitely looking out for me!

Our oldest adult child closed on their new home at the end of July while we were all still in Florida. Since there is a law in Indiana that sellers have a week AFTER closing to move out, we all decided not to move out of our Florida home until we knew their new home would be unoccupied. We didn’t have a lot of time as we would be closing on our Florida home later in the week.

We decided that we would all drive up to Indiana on August 1^st. Accept, things don’t always go as planned. Hubby was going to drive a U-Haul but our youngest decided at the last minute not to drive my husband’s car up. We left hubby’s car at the realtor’s home until we had unpacked the Pods in Indiana, with the idea we would fly back to Florida and then drive the car up.

We thought it would be a great idea if the rest of us left in the middle of the night – not many people on the road and cooler temperatures for the wheels. We packed my car and our eldest’s car. A few minutes later we discovered our eldest’s car had a flat tire. Hubby decided he would leave in the middle of the night and the oldest and I would remain to get the tire fixed and then head out. We ended up leaving Florida at about 10 AM on August 1^st instead of midnight. Those 10 hours made a huge difference!

It was a horrendous drive. There was smoke in Florida from a brush fire that made visibility poor. The check engine lights came on; we almost ran out of gas in Atlanta as we were stuck in a major traffic jam during rush hour. The tire light came on and we had difficulty finding a tire store open at 6 PM. Turns out, the tires were just overheated and after waiting an hour, we were back on our way. There was road construction through the mountains of Tennessee. It rained through all of Kentucky and it was now dark again. We also were traveling with 4 cats between us and they were starting to lose it after 12 hours, barely halfway in our journey. And it was unbearably hot, at 10 PM in Tennessee it was still in the 90s. Our car air conditioners were struggling.

We made it driving straight through, driving for 20 hours. The following two weeks were a blur of remotely closing on our Florida home, dealing with Pods, flying back to Florida, and then driving back to Indiana again.

By the middle of August I was exhausted, bruised from lifting boxes, and really missing genealogy. I had my laptop and decided to pull it out and check my email.

Sure, there was lots of spam, missed sales, and several emails from FamilySearch.org.

I don’t know about you but I don’t get a lot of mail from FamilySearch, maybe monthly. But there were lots of emails notifying me of new finds. All of the discoveries were in regard to my Leininger and Landfair lines. These were the folks who I was now following in their footsteps by relocating to where they once lived.

In the many years that I’ve had a FamilySearch account, I only recall receiving one email about a Leininger find. Why was I suddenly getting all of these notices now?

I have no idea. Perhaps the spirits were trying to use the internet to let me know that they were glad I had returned to Indiana. Perhaps not.

Next week I’ll be writing two book reviews about synchronicity. Happy Halloween!

October Genealogical Coincidences Part 4

This fourth Saturday of October brings another strange story that personally happened to me in July. As I’ve previously blogged, our family decided to relocate from Florida to Indiana and our house went up for sale online on June 29^th. By July 1^st we had a bidding war and then, both parties decided to walk away from the contract by July 8^th.

This was a problem as my husband and oldest child had flown to Indiana the weekend of July 4^th and we had a contract on another home. My husband and I decided to cancel our contract until we found a new buyer.

A few hours after the second contract was canceled I received a call from our realtor informing me we had a new contract on our home. I told him that was impossible as it had only been shown to two people. He insisted the person who placed the contract had seen it.

I didn’t want to call someone a liar but clearly, a tour hadn’t happened. I told the realtor I wanted an open house on Sunday and I thought we should accept back up offers, given what had just occurred. He agreed and said he was going to verify with the purchaser’s realtor to find out when the person had seen the house.

I got a call about a half hour later, at 11 PM. Our realtor said I better sit down. “What now?” I thought. The realtor said the man had seen the outside of the home as he and his wife had stayed in my city during the pandemic and he often visited the park across the street from our home. So, the man wasn’t lying exactly. He had seen the exterior but not the interior; he viewed the interior through the internet.

I told the realtor I really wanted him to see the interior in person before we signed the contract as that was the problem with the first two that fell through; one spouse came and wanted it and when the other spouse was brought back, he didn’t. The realtor agreed and said the man had a flight the next day and he would see it in the late afternoon. I asked where he was flying in from. “Chicago,” said the realtor.

My husband and I are originally from the Chicago area so that surprised me; most of the new residents of our then-city was arriving from the mid-Atlantic states. The realtor said there was more . . . the man was from the same small town my husband had been born and raised in.

Wow, what a coincidence, I thought. But of course, that wasn’t all. When we looked at the contract we realized the man lived on the street we used to drive on as teenagers to go to the Lake Michigan beach. There were many beaches we could have used but this beach was considered “our” beach. He lived only 3 blocks from where we used to park.

Stranger, still, I somehow recognized his name. Since my high school annuals were packed, I went on Ancestry.com to check out the yearbook database. Sure enough, I went to high school with a guy with his name. Turns out, he wasn’t the same person.

The purchaser visited the next day and was shocked when he saw that we have a painting of the town in which he lived that my sister-in-law had bought my husband years ago.

We bought our home from an architect who designed it; he, too, was an architect.

This deal went through and it went quickly – in 3 weeks.

I mentioned in a previous blog one of our reasons for relocating was that we couldn’t get our insurance coverage increased. Because he was purchasing it, he was able to get fully insured. He is only going to live in the house for 6 months of the year and go back to his other home for the rest of the time. This made us feel good; he will definitely be someone who will keep the home we put so much effort into in good condition.

So, what does this synchronistic event mean in my life? Jessica Estrada’s blog, “No, It’s Not Just a Coincidence…” suggests that synchronicity “… is an event where needs are met, people are encountered, or things just come together perfectly when we need them. In other words, being in the right place at the right time.”

The house was definitely meant for him and to interpret my cousin Shakespeare saying all the world’s a stage, us players have all gone around the playhouse. My father’s family relocated from Ft. Wayne to northwestern Indiana. My husband and I relocated from northwestern Indiana to Florida. The purchaser follows us to Florida while we move to the Ft. Wayne area where my father’s family had started out. Full circle.

There’s one more Saturday in October and I’ll finish the month out with one more strange story. Or, perhaps, two – strange occurrences seem to be my destiny this year!

October Genealogical Coincidences Part 3

Photo Courtesy of Lori Samuelson 15 Oct 2022

The month of October is moving along and I have another strange personal story to share with you.

In June, my husband and I decided we were going to relocate from Florida to Indiana. We had lived in our home for 18 years so we had a lot of stuff. Summer in Florida is not the time to have a garage sale. We decided we would just pack everything up and squeeze it into Pods. We called it playing Big Jenga.

I helped our oldest pack up their home as they had also sold and was going to relocate. I had gotten the inside of our homes boxed fairly quickly but I really dreaded the garage. In Florida, basements are rare because the water table is so close to the surface. Many subdivisions do not permit sheds so the garage becomes the catch all place for everything that has no other room to go.

Ours was packed as our youngest had moved home at the start of the pandemic so their household items were also out there.

If that wasn’t bad enough, we had been getting a lot of rain so the mosquitos were in full force. It was a hot, dirty, itchy job. And then there was the attic!

We had two small attic accesses that contained items that we couldn’t part with but didn’t know what to do with, like my grandmother’s old wooden ironing board, a folding student desk with an inkwell we once acquired at an auction, our kids’ old treasures, and something I had totally forgot we had – my dad’s wooden toolbox.

Actually, the toolbox was my grandfathers and my dad had it passed to him. He had given it to me years ago and asked me to pass it on to any son’s I might have. At the time, I didn’t have any. So, it had been forgotten in the attic.

My husband was in the attic and I was on the ladder, grabbing the items he was handing d0wn. I lost my grip on the toolbox and it fell to the floor. Thankfully, it didn’t shatter but it did come apart slightly where the old glue had given way. I opened the box to see if the contents were ruined. What I found made me gasp.

My husband, still in the attic, asked me what was wrong. I was speechless, which is rare for me. My husband asked me if I was alright. I said yes, with tears in my eyes. He came down the ladder to find out what was going on.

I was holding a brittle yellow newspaper that had been stuffed in the toolbox. I don’t recall ever seeing it before. The headline was meaningless to me and the paper was dated 1933. I knew where my father was living that year, in Lake County, Indiana, where he was attending high school. The newspaper, however, was from Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana. It was the area where we were relocating to.

Although it was insufferably hot in that garage I got the cold shivers on my neck. I knew my paternal grandfather relocated to Ft. Wayne in the mid-1960s but he certainly wasn’t there in 1933.

I have yet to learn who in the Leininger family was in Ft. Wayne at that time or why that particular page was placed in the toolbox.

What I do know is if I hadn’t been a klutz and dropped it, I might not have ever found that newspaper.

I have no idea what the universe was trying to tell me but I felt that my ancestors were sending me a message that our relocation was the right decision. Times were tough during the 1930s and our move was not a fun experience for any of us. What we were going through, however, paled in comparison to the experiences my ancestors lived through during the Great Depression.

And weirdly enough, the newspaper is now back in the area where it once originated.

October Genealogical Coincidences Part 2

Yesterday, hubby and I visited his 1st and 2nd cousins who we have not seen for almost 50 years! After my coincidence series ends I’ll be writing about ways to connect with family that has become disconnected. I think it will be helpful to you with the holidays approaching.

As Spooky October continues, here’s another synchronicity that I experienced in May.

I’ve blogged before about issues I was having with a lineage society that I have chosen to not name (Lineage Society Disappointments and Lineage Societies – What gives?!) I was going on three years waiting for a response if my paperwork was going to be accepted or not.

Initially, the paperwork had been accepted but two weeks after I received a confirmation email and an invitation to attend the annual meeting, I was informed my acceptance was in error as I had not selected an individual that met the criteria for the organization. They also cashed my check for membership.

I asked if there was a list of accepted individuals and I was told there wasn’t. I then provided a few other possible candidates and was informed that one would work. After correcting the forms and resubmitting I waited three months and did not hear anything. I inquired by email if the paperwork had been reviewed. I was told that the genealogist was busy traveling and would let me know by the end of the month.

Another three months passed and I again emailed asking for an update. I was then informed that the genealogist had asked another genealogist to review the application. I was told to be patient as that individual was extremely busy.

A year passed and I again asked. It was now the start of the pandemic and I was told that more documentation was needed. This was problematic, of course, since archives were closing around the world. I had two questions that needed a response. I could reply with proof for the first question but the second was more challenging. I submitted a response within three months which was amazing, considering I was trying to obtain documents from four countries in the late 1600-early 1700 time period during the global shutdown of archives.

Oddly, one of the organizations I reached out to for assistance was the same one that the genealogist had but I was conversing with a different individual. It turned out my contact’s wife happened to have the same individual in her family tree and he was interested to learn what I uncovered. I promised to share my findings, which I did.

Another year and a half passed and I heard nothing from the lineage society. I decided to reach out to the president of the organization who I knew from another society. She forwarded my email to a gentleman who had recently taken over for the genealogist that was handling my application.

He profusely apologized and said he had never received any of my paperwork when the position was turned over to him. No surprise there! He asked for me to send proof my check had been cashed as that was also not clear to the new treasurer. He gave me his phone number and asked that I call him.

I found my canceled check online and emailed it to him; then called as he had requested. When he answered I told him who I was and he replied, “Hi, Cuz.” Cuz? Turns out he is related to me on my father’s line as he noticed my maiden name on the application and several of the great greats I had included.

My application was approved and my newfound cousin and I have spoken and emailed several times. Here’s some additional weird stuff about us:

He lived 50 miles from me in Florida for about 50 years
He had just relocated out of Florida for the same reasons we were
His new home is 50 miles from where my husband and I own property and considered moving
We share very similar views about many things, history in particular
I was writing an article about a Civil War myth purportedly that occurred in my former city and told him I was stuck on researching the man who was at the center of the story. He happened to be familiar with the man’s father, who was an early settler in Payne’s Prairie, close to where he lived most of his life.

I’m not sure what lesson I was supposed to learn from the universe but it does drive home the point that genealogy is a study of patience! If my application had been approved immediately I would likely never have connected with my “Cuz” nor obtained the information I needed to complete the article.

Next week – another creepy occurrence that happened to me in June.

Genealogical Fence Mending

I’m not talking about farmers who must mend their fences regularly to insure their livestock and produce remains safe; I’m referring to the idiom regarding improving or repairing a relationship that has been damaged.

This week, I’ve had several situations that could be termed coincidence, synchronicity, or just considered odd. You be the judge.

The first occurred on Sunday when I was researching a pioneer family in my city for possible inclusion on an upcoming cemetery tour that my local historical society will be hosting in the fall. One of my town’s best sources is a work by Gertrude Stoughton who retired here and established the historical society. Her work is thorough and my only recommendation would have been to include footnotes as I often have difficulty tracing her information.

Above you’ll see a clip from a Google search I did to find the McElroy family who established the second drug store in town; their unnamed daughter in Stoughton’s book was purportedly the first female pharmacist in our location and probably the state of Florida.

I had searched for nearly 2 hours and was finding NOTHING about the McElroys; I located a Black family in the southern part of our county who operated a lab but the dates were way later than I was researching. I found a family of that name who once owned a pharmacy in Orlando and thought they may be related but that investigation turned up nothing. In desperation, I decided to just Google “Tarpon Springs” and “drug store.” Lo and behold up pops the clip above. Notice how McElroy is spelled? MCAROY. Hmmm. Clicking the snippet view gave me a completely different excerpt. I have a hard copy so I turned to the glossary to find a McAroy. None listed. Only one page for the McElroy’s. Somewhere, buried in that book was another sentence about the family I was researching. Skimming page after page I discovered it on page 29:

Clearly, McElroy is written and not McAroy. I went back to the online snippet and checked the copyright date of Stoughton’s book. Same as mine. There have been NO updates or newer editions with revisions.

So, tell me, how did the internet show me the correct spelling of the family I was searching when the source it was citing did not have the correct spelling anywhere in the book? Beats me!

Also on Sunday, I sent an email to an acquaintance regarding a lineage society application I had submitted 3 years ago but still had not received a resolution about. The genealogist I had been working with stopped communicating with me in July 2020, I assumed because of the pandemic. I asked my colleague to forward my request for a resolution to whoever was currently involved with that organization. The following day I received an email from the current genealogist. We wrote several exchanges and Tuesday evening, I decided to call him to make sure I was clear on the direction we were going. When I told him who I was on the phone call he replied, “Hi, cousin.” I was stunned. Sure enough, I’ve done a surname study of several family names and he is my cousin from a line I’ve never met in person. Odder still, he lived not far from me for the last 50 years but recently moved out of state 3 months ago. He moved to an area close to where we also own property and planned to visit this summer. We’ll be getting together then.

We had a wonderful conversation on many genealogical topics and he let me know about two Sons of the American Revolution applications he had done for Florida families. Florida wasn’t a colony in Colonial America and I really never thought much about its involvement in our Revolutionary War.

The following day, I was getting my hair trimmed and shared the coincidences with my stylist who is interested in history. He had to step away from me to take a phone call for a reschedule and when he returned he informed me that somehow, my appointment wasn’t scheduled for today but someone named Renee was supposed to have been there instead. He didn’t know a Renee. I told him I only knew one. Seconds later that Renee’s mom happened to walk into the shop. We laughed about the coincidence.

I had planned after my haircut to visit a local funeral home (as a genealogist, this makes sense, right?!) as I got a tip that the owner was a descendant of a man who local stories claim lynched several men locally during the Civil War. The problem is I have found records showing the man wasn’t even in this area at the time the purported lynching occurred.

The descendant wasn’t available so I left my card with the couple who was in the office. I told them why I wanted to speak with the owner. The woman informed me she was from a pioneering family in the county north of mine and the story I was interested in didn’t occur during the Civil War but during the Revolutionary War. I thought about the story my newly met cousin had told me about the previous evening. Weird.

Since I’ve had such an odd week I decided to just spill the next part. . . A woman who I met who is involved in a lineage society informed me that dead Rebel soldiers speak to her and one named Parker told her that he had been killed on Deserter’s Hill and was buried under a museum.

I will investigate any tip I get so I asked her if the dead man had told her if Parker was his first or last name. She didn’t know. I asked where the museum was located as there wasn’t one on the site. She didn’t know. So much for that hint.

The woman at the funeral home looked at her spouse and they stared at each other for a bit. Were they thinking I was a kook? I just let the quiet hang. She then said there were Parkers in the area and they were involved in the Civil War and they were buried in Anclote Cemetery. Wow. But that’s not all – one was buried in an unmarked grave that they later discovered happened to be under a sign for an RV company. Very odd.

I plan to be checking out this Parker family. But here’s the clincher of the ending.

I asked for both of their names. You probably already figured this out. Her name was Renee. I laughed. Asked her if she had an appointment at my salon today. She didn’t.

So now I know 2 Renees. I’d love to meet the woman who was supposed to have been having her hair cut at the same time as me with the same stylist. Maybe she doesn’t exist and it was a message for me that I should have gone to the funeral home first as that Renee wasn’t planning on staying much longer. I’m glad we connected.

The connections we make as genealogists and the records we leave behind are important historical truths. An innocent man has been linked to crimes he never committed. A woman before her time was largely forgotten because of the misspelling of her name. My parent’s divorce has led me to not know my father’s family. In 48 hours this week, all of those fences were fixed because of a chain of weird occurrences.

Genealogists don’t think of themselves as fence menders but it is what we do, it’s who we are. And I sure appreciate a little help from the Universe to get over those fences!

Another Duer Synchronicity

The universe has made some odd Duer connections for me lately and I just have to share!

For my new readers, I’ve been enamored with my Duer lines for the past several years after I received an out of the blue email from a Duer genealogist who informed me I had wrongly recorded the surname as Dure in my Ancestry.com tree. Edgar sent me an electronic version of his work which went back generations and within two weeks, he died. The good news was that he got the information out before he passed; the bad news was I could never ask him questions or collaborate on further research with him. The odd thing about that email was that it did not go through Ancestry but Edgar had somehow gotten my personal email. I never learned how he tracked me down. It also was received at a time I was extremely busy with family matters that strengthened the Duer connection.

The weirdest occurrence at the time I received the information was to discover one of my children had followed the same path as the Gateway ancestors. My child had spent a college term in Cambridge, England, decided to live in Grenada, West Indies upon graduation and then relocated to Morristown, New Jersey. Seriously, who follows that migration? Apparently, others in my family.

The Gateway ancestor, Thomas Duer, had married Mary Ann Hollingshead who had been born in the West Indies and with her father, relocated to Sussex County, New Jersey. Her parents were from Great Britain, as were Thomas’. My child was following the same immigration routes as her ancestors 250 years before. The problem was I only had 2 weeks to research as the dear child was once again relocating and I would have no reason (or place to stay for cheap) in Morristown. During breaks in the packing, I’d planned to visit the library which contained the oldest remaining records of the area. The night before my arrival, there was a gas explosion and the library was off limits. I was beyond disappointed. I did check out several other research facilities around the area but discovered nothing. (And yes, I did make a trip back later to visit the library when it reopened and I mined it for some small tidbits of info.)

Although researching in the Sussex County area had been disappointing I found another way to gather information. Edgar had not made his work public which I promptly did and that has opened the universe to many connections that have enabled me to put together the family’s dynamics over centuries. To me, it’s a very interesting family who never backed down from their beliefs which were way ahead of the society in which they lived. That character strength led to records, mainly court, which have been fascinating to read.

For the past 2 years I’ve been trying to connect Revolutionary War Patriot John Duer to his son, Thomas. Thomas died intestate before John so he wasn’t named in John’s will. Records from New Jersey are scant but last month I did find a document through FamilySearch.org that placed John, his wife, Susannah, and Thomas, all in the same place at the same time in Sussex. They had witnessed a will of a widow of the town’s physician. I learned that Susannah was illiterate, John had wonderful handwriting and Thomas, not so much. Thomas would have been 18, of legal age to testify in court that he had witnessed the widow’s wishes.

The record I wished to view was only available at a Family History Library so I trekked to one, accessed the microfilm, and promptly saved it to a thumb drive. I checked the thumb drive before I left the facility. All good. Until I got home and tried to open it. I can’t explain why but only half of the first page of the will was visible and it was the part that didn’t have the Duer signatures. The facility was now closed and wouldn’t reopen until the following week so I sought out another library location. My husband offered to go as it was quite a drive. We made it through a violent rain storm and I again found the record quickly (thanks to clearly writing the citation down) and triple checked that the document was saved intact. This time, I was successful. It seems I must work extra hard on this line to move forward!

I know from land records that the family relocated to what is now West Virginia/southern Ohio shortly after the will was written. I’m still trying to hunt down those deeds. I have found 2 clues to their existence but have been unable to locate the exact location. I decided to spend the summer working on that project.

I began by reading up on various companies that sold land during the late 18th century in the U.S. and track down where the land grant records were held. John is not listed in Bounty Land records held by the government so I decided to pursue private collections, such as the Ohio Company, whose records reside at Marietta College.

I got a beep on my phone that an email had come through so I checked as I was anticipating a response from Marietta College. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to have received 3 photos of the grave of Thomas. I had placed a request on Find-A-Grave and Billion Graves several years ago but no one picked it up, probably because the cemetery is so remote. The sender was a gentleman I had met once at a local to me genealogy meeting. In the twisted Duer way I discover information about the family, I had signed in and put my current area of research was Trumbull County. At the conclusion of the program about Cuban genealogy, the gentleman asked who I was. I waved and he said he wanted to have a word with me. After the meeting concluded he informed me that he was from Trumbull County, Ohio and he had never met anyone else in our area that was researching that location. We exchanged contact info and I asked him if he knew of anyone I could reach out to to obtain a picture of the gravestone. He said he would try his friend. I was not surprised when a week later he told me his friend had become ill and would not be able to visit the cemetery. So again, out of the blue, nearly two years after we met, the gentleman, also named Ed, remembered my request while visiting the area and surprised me with the photos.

I decided to share them with the only other person I had ever connected with who has Trumbull County roots – a former genealogy society member who still lives in that area but due to age, can no longer drive. I forwarded the pictures to her because when we first connected two years ago, she told me that Thomas had almost killed her. I was understandably confused since he died in 1829 and she was still alive but she went on to explain that she was doing a cemetery clean up and had tripped and fallen over his stone. She and other genealogy society members had righted and replaced it.

A few days went by and while I was outside speaking with the house painter I had hired, my cell rang. I excused myself as I saw the area code was from Trumbull County. Sure enough, it was the dear woman who had righted Thomas’ gravestone and we talked about my latest findings and where I was headed with the research. Hanging up, I explained to my painter how excited I was to receive the photos and to collaborate with someone so knowledgeable who lived in the area I was researching. The painter, who had gone to high school with one of my children, asked where I was researching. When I told him he laughed and informed me that his family had first emigrated from Greece to Trumbull County and he had spent the last 10 years living in the area as he still has family there who are bridge painters.

I was speechless. The universe was clearly making connections and the discovery was in my own backyard. Very weird! Even stranger, I had planned to visit Cuba for the first time 3 days later. I had only attended the local genealogy meeting where I met Ed because I wanted information in preparation for a trip to Cuba. We had had a tropical storm the previous day of that meeting and I debated whether I should drive across bridges to get there as the wind was still strong. At the end, the genealogy bug won and I made the trip. I’m so glad I did!

Patience is a virtue I have trouble possessing. Maybe that’s the lesson the universe is trying to teach me. The Duer seeds were planted a few years ago and the universe, in its own time, are maturing them and now I’m reaping the fruits. I can’t wait for the final harvest – that missing document that clearly shows that Thomas is the son of John. People have told me repeatedly I won’t find it but I believe it’s out there somewhere. The search continues.

Synchronicity in the Work Place

Synchronicity is the occurrence of events that relate but the connection was made in an unexplainable way. I’ve written about odd happening with my genealogy many times before. Sometimes I randomly start up a conversation with an individual and discover we’re related. A wayward email or a post from long ago (remember mail list servs?!) finds there way to me and uncovers the key to long sought after records. I’m in an archive miles from where my ancestor lived and something pops in my mind to check an individual out and discover records there that shouldn’t be. Those eebee jeebee occurrences are indeed special!

I realize that all of us humans on planet earth are related; sharing something close to 99.5% DNA. Perhaps the following true story is not as weird as I see it. You be the judge.

My primary job is still in the educational arena and that’s where the occurrence I’m about to describe happened in mid-January. The flu hit our workplace hard the first week of January. One of the individuals in a supervisory capacity went from flu to bronchitis to pneumonia over a 2 week period. While home recuperating, she received in the US mail a piece of junk mail from Reader’s Digest for a man she supervises.

I don’t know about you, but I weekly get someone else’s mail delivered to my house so this is no big deal, right? Wrong! The two do not reside in the same neighborhood. In fact, they don’t even live in the same county. The names of the cities where they live are not similar and neither is the street address or zip code. The envelope was not stuck to another. The supervisor who received it does not have a last name alphabetically close to her employee so that wasn’t a reason for the wrong delivery.

Upon receiving the letter, the supervisor texted the employee that he might want to stop by her home after work to pick up his mail. He responded, “Huh? What mail.” She then took a pic of what had arrived at her home that day and sent it to him. The address was clearly typewritten showing his first and last name, home address, city, state and zip. Typically, his mail is delivered to a post office box. He called his local post office and spoke with the postmaster for an explanation of how this could have happened.

The postmaster said he couldn’t explain it. From where the letter was mailed, it would have arrived at the Tampa International Airport receiving facility where it would have been sorted. It would have then traveled by truck to the county where the man lives to be further sorted and delivered to his local post office where the employees should have put it in his pick up box. The truck from the airport to the county post office would not have been the same vehicle that carried mail for the person who received it since she resides in a different county.

The postmaster could offer no explanation in how it went through 4 sorts (the airport, the county facility, the local facility, the home mail delivery person) and no one noticed it was headed for the wrong destination or how its final arrival was to someone who knew the person well.

Both supervisor and employee have endured a lot of ribbing about the universe wanting to connect them personally. I’d be tired of hearing how they should purchase a lottery ticket or take advantage of the junk mail offer. Certainly weird things happen and perhaps there is no hidden message to uncover here. We’re still talking about it 3 weeks later so I said I’d put it out there to cyberspace to see if someone can come up with a rational explanation. Any ideas?