Kindergarten Serendipity

Shelley Hallman shared with me this story of serendipity.

My family always tease me about my habit of questioning people I meet who share the names of ancestors on our family tree. I guess that the habit has been ingrained as my daughter was the instrument of this piece of serendipity:

She recently moved to another state. Her oldest child started kindergarten and about a month later an e-mail listing of the contacts of the children in her child’s class was mistakenly posted. My daughter called me excitedly and said “MOM! You will never believe this…. There is a child named Hallman in the Kindergarten class! I contacted the Mom and here is her e-mail. But she said she’s just moving in so will contact me as soon as they are settled.” I sent the mother an e-mail and explained who I was and that I’d soon be visiting and would love to compare and share what info I had on the family name with her. Several weeks later while visiting with my daughter I again contacted her explaining I was in the area and gave my daughter’s phone number. She called and we settled on a time to visit and exchanged directions to each other’s homes. THEY LIVE JUST TWO BLOCKS APART!

She shared several pictures of the family and there is definitely a resemblance. We discovered that there are several traits shared by family members as well. She is in possession of an out of print family book and it turns out that our fathers-in-law are 2nd cousins. Amazing!

Thank you, Shelley, for sharing. That is what we call, Serendipity in Genealogy.

Image courtesy of AKARAKINGDOMS at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.