Genealogy Chat

Christmas Day and Boxing Day were two days when people officially didn't have to work. In the 1800s most people worked six days a week and didn't get paid when they didn't work which, of course, most could ill afford. It wasn't like today when you can just take a days holiday to marry. It was only with the rise of the labour unions in the twentieth century that working conditions and employee rights started to improve.

It was a tradition that churches, certainly in London, offered free marriages and baptisms on Christmas Day and at Easter.

http://www.thebirdtree.co.uk/showmedia.php?mediaID=65

This also happened in Scotland where marriages were free on Xmas Day.

Have you noticed that the ancestors who married Christmas day were not expecting a child....But the ones who married any other time seemed to have premature babies :-D

If you take a group of 23 people it is a better than evens chance that two of them will share a birthday.

So it is more likely than not that if you look at the birthdays for your great great grandparents and great grandparents there will be a shared birthday.

If you take your own and all generations back to great great great grandparents then it becomes better than 99% certain there is a shared date.

My best coincidence is that two of my great great great grandparents married exactly 100 years before I was born. Mind you they left it a bit late as my great great grandfather was about 7 then.

I have found a lot of events happening on my birthday.....not noticed any other family birthday's cropping up

The most recent my dads sister died on my 21st and one of his uncles probate is dated the day I was born

I've literally just found the death of a distant really whose birth date I didn't know. His birth date is on the death record, and it was 10th August - spooky, or what?

25th December was a popular wedding date for my ancestors. :-)

If you've got 100 people in your tree with birth baptism, marr & death dates, it's hard to avoid some coincidences.

Yes, I have a couple of dates in October (differing years) which crop up time and again. Usually it's births, marriages or deaths, but I have found different occasions, for example, the date of Naturalisation of my grandfather was on one of those dates; the repatriation of a WWII PoW relative was on one of those dates.
Those dates crop up so often it's more than coincidence....it's spooky!

Gosh GlasgowLass that is quite a coincidence.

I have found that 22 November crops up time and again for events on completely separate branches of my tree, but nothing so similar as your events.

Gwyn

I found a few coincidences with dates, but within my family history.

My gg grandmother died (1867) just a few days after giving birth to my great grandfather
On the same date 23 years later, (1890) the wife of my g grandfather ( my g grandmother) also died in childbirth with my grandfather

My 2nd child was born on this date (1990)...exactly 100 yrs from the death of my great grandmother and 123 yrs after the death of my gg grandmother

It's not coincidence or magic, just the mind working at a subconcious level.

Has anyone else found they seem to search for particular people on their tree 'out of the blue' and then realise that the dates are significant ?

I have just been over on Find Ancestors renewing a search for a particular couple in 1911 census.
It was only in reading the whole thread through again afterwards that I realised I started it exactly 4 years ago today.

Daniel, who I was searching for, died this week in 1915,....

Concidence, I know, but it has happened to me many times over the years.

Gwyn