British cousins Ian Brandon (74) and Malcolm Atkins (73) were visiting the grave of their great-great-great grandfather in Northamptonshire, England, on September 22 when they ran into their fourth cousin, Rand Smith (69), who had traveled all the way from Kansas City to do the very same thing.
The cousins from opposite sides of the pond had each (separately) been planning the trip to their ancestors' final resting place for years, and just happened to show up within a couple of minutes of each other.
Brandon said,
We basically turned up together, it was most strange.
If you need more evidence of Divine Providence, the odds of such a meeting occurring on the same day at the exact same time are 12 billion to one, according to SWNS.
When Rand and his wife Janeel went up to look at the gravesite at St. Peter's Church, their British cousins were doing the same.
Janeel asked them if they knew who the grave belonged to, to which Ian replied that it was his third great-grandfather, Anthony Smith, who died in the 1850s. All Rand could say was:
The American cousin, Rand Smith, told SWNS,
No one else was in the cemetery. To learn that they are our fourth cousins was absolutely thrilling.
Malcolm Atkins is the ancestry buff in his family, a fact that his wife has often poked fun at.
Atkins told SWNS,
My wife Linda always wondered how I could do such a boring hobby. It is just names on a piece of paper, but on one account I've got 2,000 names.
Well the joke's on Linda now, because one of those names just happened to walk right up and introduce himself.
Atkins went on to say,
We met at that precise moment, and now people are saying it's divine intervention. I don't have a religious bone, but if we arrived half-an-hour later, we wouldn't have known they were there.
The cousins then had an impromptu family reunion, going out to a nearby pub for lunch, where they caught up on the past FOUR generations of family history.
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