Here is an interesting one. When I married my husband, no one had researched his genealogy. In fact, neither his mom nor his dad could tell me ANYTHING about their family. I asked my father in law if his parents had any siblings and he said that his mom was one of about 10 children and that his dad only had one brother.

Anyway, I started ordering death certificates and obituaries for my husbands grandparents and when I received the obituary for my father in law's father, it mentioned 4 half-siblings. I questioned my father in law and he said that he didn't know about them. I thought that this was peculiar since my father in law was an adult when his father died. Anyway, I tried to track down these half siblings knowing that they were up there in years. I finally got a hold of one of the half sisters in Michigan. (My father in law is from Texas) We started talking and she asked where I was and I told her that I lived near Fort Worth, Texas. She told me that one of her sons lived near Fort Worth and worked in a machine shop. I immediately mentioned that my father in law and him had a lot in common because he too worked in a machine shop. It turned out that my father in law and her son worked in the SAME machine shop for twenty years and never knew that they were half first cousins. They had the same GRANDFATHER!

The half sister told me that she spent several years trying to track down "Jaspers boys" but was never able to locate them. She said that my phone call was an answer to a prayer. She is going to be 89 this year. How often does that happen? Now they are at all of our family functions! Yes, pursuing ones genealogy can yield lots of suprises. It sure keeps life interesting!!  

--Last edited by LVGirl on 2007-10-04 22:46:30 --