Serendipity
A Whim on a Summer Day
by Darlene Almer
My e-mail address is DarleneA@aol.com
and I live in
Longview, WA.
I started doing genealogy in 1982, took a
pause of a couple of years and decided to go back to it in 1997 because
of a cousin taking up the hobby and asking me questions about what I
already had done.
I went to the LDS Family History Center here in Longview one day last summer and on a whim, went into the IGI and pulled up all the John Dobbins I could find with the intention of printing them off and checking them later, since that is a very common name in the Dobbins family.
As the printer stopped and I was tearing the sheets off, I noticed the name Johnnie Dobbins with parents listed as John D. Dobbins and Minnie Whitaker (my known great grandparents) -- I was absolutely floored as I stared at the printout and the staff was as excited as I was.
Here was the clue I needed to contact the submitter of this info who indeed turned out to be family -- all I had known previously was that my Grandfather's name was Johnnie Dobbins and his father was also John Dobbins and that his mother was Minnie Whitaker.
Now I have siblings of my Grandfather and other family connections, including the Civil War record of my Great-Grandfather -- all because I had a whim to print off the names from the IGI that day.
Submitted: Sun Dec 21 15:47:23 1997
