Genealogy Serendipity. It happened to me!

Everyone who does genealogy and family history research has moments of serendipity, or sheer coincidence or luck.  Like when I found a random envelope with some cryptic numbers my dad wrote which turned out to be all the same dates of his family history that I had been researching.

But nothing prepared me for what happened when my sisters, niece and uncle and I took a trip to Asturias to visit our family homestead.  Sure we were hoping to find some vital records and tombstones, take pictures of the old family homes, visit the mines where the men worked and be awestruck by the ocean views my grandmother missed so much.

 We couldn’t believe when we found a house my great grandfather (and possibly my grandfather) lived in that we never knew about before; but since I had the census record with a street address it was not really that much of a coincidence. It was the result of lots of online research. (We found what we thought was the house, took tons of photos, went back the next day and realized the correct house was actually down the street! But that’s another story.)

We had an amazing time in Asturias. We had rented a house we found online that was just great and with gorgeous sea views and a short distance to most places we wanted to visit.  When we returned home we got busy downloading our photos and enjoyed sorting through them remembering what a great trip we had.  My uncle and I had been trying to find a photo of my grandmother’s cousin, a teacher, who lived in the mining town where we stayed; with the help of another cousin in St. Louis we realized we did have photos of Jesusa and even a home movie of her and my mother from the 60s.  It was great putting those pieces together. Without my mother and my grandmother the rest of us are useless at identifying people in old photos.

Before we left for Spain I had scanned a vacation photo from one of my Aunt Mildred’s trips to Spain which included an elderly woman who I thought might be Jesusa.  It wasn’t her.  But I got to looking at it again and noticed that the sea wall in the background looked familiar. It kept nagging at me so I kept coming back to that faded snapshot. After some comparison I thought it really looks like the sea wall at the house we just rented. I thought my family would think I was crazy, but I emailed it to them anyway. They immediately agreed. “That looks EXACTLY like the Best for Sea Lovers wall!!  It’s got to be the same house.”  So, I emailed Julio the owner of the house and long story short -  He was flabbergasted and confirmed that it was in fact the same house.

We still don’t know if a family member or just a family friend lived there, but who cares! We rented a house where my grandmother’s cousins may have lived, and if not, most definitely visited.  Very cool. For a genealogist anyway!

Julie on the left; mystery ladies (family?) on the right.

Aunt Mildred holding white purse.

Group selfie by Tio Don