Arthur H

At a pavement cafe in Athens in September 2010 my wife and I got into conversation with an Australian couple at the next table. When I enquired whether they had any English ancestors they told me that they had, and had visited their graves in the West Country. I then happened to mention that a mystery in my family had been the disappearance of a great uncle who had emigrated to Australia in 1910 and had never been heard of again. When I mentioned that his name was Arthur H, the Aussie man looked stunned and said that his father's name had been Arthur H! For a moment we both thought that we might be related as second cousins, but then realised that this was unlikely since we were of similar age. However, he was sufficiently intrigued by the coincidence to offer to email me if he was able to find any lead on my great uncle in Australian archives on his return home. He kept his word, but unfortunately has not been able to uncover any new information, partly because the Australian government has decided not to publish their 1911 census. Due to our email exchanges we have discovered many shared interests and become good friends, culminating in their visiting us last July during a holiday in the UK, and in return we will visit them in March as part of a trip to Australia. What strikes me most about this coincidence is not so much the fact that we shared close ancestors with the same name, but that this fact happened to emerge in our casual conversation - the probabilities of these two unlikely events presumably being multiplied.