Coincidences occur all the time and in most cases they probably mean nothing at all. They can be entertaining, though, and it’s always tempting to speculate whether some guiding influence is shaping our ends, possibly for his or her own amusement.
Anyway, they amuse me, and there are some mildly interesting ones – and one fairly staggering one – in my family background. I might write about them all sometime, but for now, here’s one that cropped up recently.
While researching the ancestry of my first-cousin-twice-removed Ida Coffin Duncan I found out that her grandfather, Kenneth Douglas Coffin, had had a son, also called Kenneth Douglas. (That’s not the coincidence. Duplicate family names are occasionally coincidental but as a rule they’re just annoying evidence of lack of imagination, or a transparent attempt to confuse the perpetrators’ unfortunate descendants as they try to piece together their ancestry. When I used to work in a bookshop, I always thought it would have been a much nicer job without the customers. Similarly doing genealogical research would be so much more enjoyable if it wasn’t for all the ancestors. However.)
Kenneth Douglas Coffin junior (b. 1862) moved to Australia and settled in Mackay, Queensland. Continue reading Coincidences