Serendipity in Oklahoma

This is the ideal place to share this event. I realize I haven't written here in several months, but this looks like a good story to share, since it relates to family history.

I recently received a request to look for an obituary for someone, from an unknown lady in an unknown place. After I located the obituary for her and typed it up and emailed it, she thanked me and said, "If there's anything you need in Oklahoma, just let me know."

Well, people have said similar things to me before, and I usually just thank them and say I will contact them if I have a need for. And I never do, for most of the time they live in areas where none of my family ever lived. This time was different.

I remembered that some of my grandparents' relatives lived in a small town in Oklahoma called "Lookeba." I recently submitted names for temple work for some of them. My great grandmother Johnson's sister (nee Belden) had married a Chambers, and I remembered that later on they had gone to Lookeba, but I forgotten that my grandmother's brother also lived there. In fact, he was the husband of one of the people I had submitted for temple ordinances. Something just told me to mention this town, even though I figured the chances of her being anywhere near it were remote.

Imagine my surprise when she replied and said that her mother had been born there, was still alive (and age 89), as was an older sister, and she goes there every year to put flowers on the graves of her family who are buried there. She asked for the names of my family, so I had to do a little digging to get them all straight, but I sent them on to her yesterday.

Tonight she replied, saying she had met one of my grandmother's nephews, still living and still living in Lookeba, this past spring. And her mother remembered many of the people I had mentioned to this lady.

Talk about a small world! You just never know who you will meet online!

We will continue to correspond, I'm sure. She has promised pictures of tombstones when she goes to the cemetery next Memorial day. I hope for an opportunity to correpond with my mother's cousin Charles (the one she met), it will be great to "get together" with a branch of the family who went south 100 years ago, while my branch came west. And I can't wait to tell my cousin Mike about this latest contact!