Genealogy Wise

The Genealogy & Family History Social Network

I can relate to this group so well.

My whole life is full of these events that I find very purposeful. For example, I recently had a family history gap that I just could not fill in or understand what happened. I have a great-grandfather who apparently left for cigarettes one day and never returned home to his family. He had a wife, and at the time would have had three children, two daughters and a son.

I had always heard that he just left and must have been angry for some reason, but why? He left a letter to my great-grandmother in 1942 cutting off contact, but this was much after him leaving in the first place and did not clarify why he may have left. This "somewhat" made me bias towards him and made me feel he had abandoned his family. I also seriously felt is ghost was barring me from finding out where he died until I figured out where he went beforehand.

I was determined to follow the story and see where it lead. Most researchers know exactly what I mean when I say I went down the "rabbit hole" with this one. I would find myself up at 2-3 in the morning doing VERY odd searches, just to see what might come up. However, my answers came one night when I suddenly opened a webpage for US Gen Web that had a cemetery index for Mt. Avon Cemetery in Oakland County, Michigan (which is where my family was at the time).

However, what I found there on accident was not a coincidence. I found a listing for a very young man that died at the age of 4-5. I had always been told of my great-grandmothers younger brother that died young, but I had always assumed he was a son of David and Sophia her parents. Yet, the parents listed for him shocked me.

I was also told by family members that his daughter Mary would have been about 6 years old when my great-grandpa David left. This put him leaving around 1929. At that time, he was married to Sophia, who later remarried a man named Walter.

The boy I had found was the son of Walter and Sophia but he was born in 1929.

Through all the small synchronicities that occurred which can never be fully explained or detailed, I was able to determine that Sophia MUST have been pregnant with another man's child when David left. Here I was thinking this man was a jerk for leaving his family and it was my great-grandmother who was most likely at fault.

There is no way I would have found this information without the help of some universal pattern that displays itself only when you look. After this, the information about David came flooding in, where he died, where he was buried and more. It was as if I was not going to find the death information with the bias that I had toward him. It was as if his ghost was trying to make me understand what happened FIRST. I cannot explain all of the details of course, but this was my gut feeling.

Great to meet others who will understand how this works :)

Angelique

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Replies to This Discussion

This is a remarkable story, Angelique. Often a synchronous event has that mysterious quality of an "Aha!" experience when data suddenly becomes "information". Scientists sometimes after gazing long hours at drab experimental data suddenly enjoy a reverie of discovery they may call "Wonder!". A theologian might describe it as "revelation" when knowledge is transfigured into insight. These experiences always strikes one with a sense of the extra-ordinary. Thank you for sharing this account with us.

Colin

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