While bored one night (about 4am) I decided to use Google's toolbar to help me search for anything on the web that might be associated with my family tree. While searching for the Woodcock branch" in Birmingham I entered a few select words like "william woodcock emma harriet george harold", made sure the highlighter was selected and started searching.
About 30-odd search result pages in I came across someone's guestbook entry for someone's Woodcock site so I clicked the link and scrolled down to the entry. Sure enough, this was just what I was looking for. Matching names for the parents and all of the children including the location, Birmingham but, the thing that got me was that the year mentioned was exactly 20 years earlier.
Confused I looked up the email address of the person who posted the message and sent them an email. Then I looked at their website where they had an old family photograph. One of the men at the back looked very similar to my granddad but the year under the photograph would have made him to be about 20 years older than he would have been at that time.
Even now looking through old family photographs I've got going back to my great grandparents there's an awful lot of family resemblance through the generations.
A couple days later I received an email back informing me that it was in fact a different family - she had got all the dates through parish records and birth/death certificates.
It just happened to be a massive coincidence. A William Woodcock had married an Emma in Birmingham and had children which included the same names as my family in the same place but 20 years earlier. After more research on my part and help from a couple members of this board I discovered it was a massive coincidence afterall! Only major difference apart from the 20 year gap was the surname of William's wife, Emma, which I later found out.
What's the chances of that?
Moral? Double check the dates and double check them again!
