Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Surprise

This year's challenge is 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks and is run by Amy Johnson Crow.

What the topic can cover:

What is something surprising that you've found in your research?
What is a surprise that one of your ancestors had?
Have you found something in a surprising place?

With a theme like "Surprise," you never know what you'll find!

First up, I have to stay I don't like surprises. I knew with researching, I would find some but overall I just don't like them. This is due to most of the time when I get a surprise, its a really bad one. An example of the last one was when my family called me to tell me about my brother's death. Another would be after almost a year of people wanting me to celebrate my birthday I relented and September 11th happened that year. Yep, those types of surprises I get.

Anyhow, if I have to say surprises in my research, I'd have to say my mother's family when she told me for most of my life her brothers, my uncles, were dead. Then I started to research and found one uncle alive and not far from where I grew up and the best thing? I found I had 3 cousins I knew nothing about. Bonus!

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The next hurdle was to see if they wanted contact, so I contacted one of my cousins, Jason. Another bonus as he was just as excited to find out about me as I was about him.

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Then we started to talk about where we lived and we were both astounded at just how close we lived and didn't even know it. However, the ways my mother acted or reasons she gave not to go to certain areas now I understood. She knew they were there, but didn't want contact for some reason.

Copyright map of GoogleEarth Yellow are towns of my uncle and cousins. The blue are my mother and myself

The best thing is Jason wanted to keep contact. And we have since we found each other. We've even compared some memories and we faintly remembered meeting each other when he was 18 months or (or around) and I was about 3 1/2. We barely have a memory but its there even if its a slight one.

Then earlier this year when we had to go back "home" to attend my brother's services, I finally got to meet them in person.

My uncle, my cousins and myself in January 2019 in New York.

Now we just have to keep the link alive...

My play on the old rhyme...

"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again."

Source: The Dorling Kindersley Book of Nursery Rhymes (2000)

My take:

Jo Ann's family sat on a wall,
Jo Ann's family had a great fall;
All Jo Ann did
Was put the family back together again!