Coincidence? Serendipitous Events at the Cemetery
– Christopher C. Bain

If you've had a serendipitous moment while conducting family history research, likely you're not alone. Family historians everywhere have had experiences that have energized their research and opened their minds to events that can't necessarily be explained.

Although I consider myself to be a spiritual person, I haven’t been overly involved in organized religions since my youth. My skepticism in the existence of a "hereafter" was turned upside down, however, one hot September morning while I was alone in a small North Carolina cemetery. Two other hard-to-explain events that have subsequently occurred during research outings in English cemeteries have put that long-held skepticism of my youth to rest. Perhaps such occurrences are commonplace with family genealogists, perhaps they are much more rare and I am simply among the fortunate few; either way, I no longer believe in mere coincidences.

A Gift
In the spring of last year, I learned that I needed to travel to London on business for a few days. My fourteen-year-old daughter Cristina was due to spend that week with me so I arranged to take her with me. Seizing the opportunity of a quick adventure into the British countryside, we planned a one-day outing to the hamlet of Bramfield, Suffolk, the village of my mother’s paternal family, the Hawards of Bramfield.
A few hours by train brought us to Ipswich, where we rented a car and drove into the rolling farmland of Suffolk. I had learned from some old family letters, obituaries, and other documents that my mother’s grandfather, Robert E. Haward had been born in the Bramfield-Walpole-Halesworth area of Suffolk around 1849.
As we turned off the highway onto the increasingly smaller roads, I got my first look at the lush farmland where my ancestors worked, worshiped, and raised their families. When I saw the first roadside sign marking the outskirts of Bramfield, a shiver went down my spine. I had known of our family connection to the area for years and had planned to visit someday. But even ten days earlier, I had no thought of such a trip, and yet there I was entering the small village.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t had time to do much research about the area before the trip. I had learned, however, that there were two churches in the small village, each with adjoining cemeteries. The general store in Bramfield, which also serves as the post office, seemed the logical place to question the residents.
The proprietors, Mr. and Mrs. Excell, directed us to the two churches in town, St. Andrews and the Bramfield Chapel. The name of Haward was familiar to them, and Mrs. Excell was fairly sure there were some Haward headstones in the front of the cemetery at the Bramfield Chapel.
As we walked a hundred yards or so to the small churchyard, the anticipation of finding one or two Haward headstones mounted rapidly. A few yards from the wrought iron fence that surrounds the property, we saw what we had come for: Louisa Haward, then Robert, Sophia, Charles, and others; Hawards all! I wasn’t sure how some of them were related to me, but it didn’t matter. I had to blink back the overwhelming sensation of having arrived at an ancestral burial ground.
I often speak aloud in cemeteries, greeting those deceased family members that I am visiting, and asking the pardons of the deceased individuals whose plots I may be inadvertently crossing.
"Hello, Hawards," I said in a voice just happy to be there. "We’re your distant relatives from the United States." My daughter looked at me quizzically.
We slowly and reverently walked from headstone to headstone and from crypt to crypt, calling out various names to each other, counting more than a dozen Hawards. After a few minutes, I stood back and looked over the little chapel; it had been built in 1840 during the Independency movement in the United Kingdom. Even from several yards away I noted that the exterior appeared to be made with sharp little blue-gray stones that jutted out from some type of mortar. At first glance they resembled mussel shells.
I approached the side of the building to examine the stones more carefully and when the fingers of my right hand touched the wall, one of the small blue gray stones came off into my hand. I turned it over in my hands, marveling at this small piece of the chapel that had been placed while many of the occupants in the cemetery were still alive.
Maybe the small stone I held in my hand would have dislodged itself during the next storm, joining the many similar stones that lay along the exterior base of the chapel. Perhaps it was a complete coincidence that it fell into my hand upon my first touch. I walked slowly around the perimeter of the building, dragging my hand lightly across hundreds of the blue-gray stones, and not one other stone that I touched was loose. Cristina suggested that perhaps it was a gift from our ancestors.
For many hours that day we charted, transcribed, and photographed every Haward stone in the cemetery. We had conversations with a few helpful locals who stopped by to see what we were doing in the old graveyard. It seems that the only folks to visit it are family historians who make the pilgrimage to Bramfield.
As we prepared to move on to nearby Halesworth, Cristina took one more trip through the back portion of the cemetery. As she walked, she crossed a small grassy patch and stumbled over a rock that was hidden in the foot-long grass. The grass that she fell onto, however, had a hard flat surface underneath and she called me to help uncover her find. It turned out to be the beautiful yet fallen headstone of Robert Ebeneezer Haward (1852—1936), grandson of Robert and Sophia and longtime pillar in the local church and community. Instead of letters carved into the headstone, this headstone had inlaid metal letters, which I’ve only seen a few times. Cristina’s grin grew as she realized the remarkable nature of her find; we had been through that area several times already, and there had been no reason for her to check it one last time.

A Flat Tire
Six months later, again in London on business, I took another day trip to Suffolk. From Bramfield, I telephoned a church using the number I had found on a "Churches of Suffolk" Web site. An older gentleman greeted me. Although it was December, I asked if it was possible to visit the Walpole Independent Chapel, where I suspected many more Hawards might be buried. He invited me to meet him there in a few minutes.
Walpole is a tiny village just five minutes from Bramfield, yet I had trouble finding the chapel. I had a photograph of it from the Web site so I knew what I was looking for, yet after driving through Walpole several times and taking every little road I could find, I still couldn’t locate the small church. I passed another church two or three times, St. Mary, and made a mental note to check that graveyard later in the day, if time allowed. As ten minutes turned to fifteen and then twenty, my speed through the small roads of Walpole increased in direct proportion to the mounting frustration that I felt. I didn’t see a single person that I could question, not even in the one business establishment in which I stopped. As I was speeding over the crest of a hill, a flat tire sent me careening off the road. I veered into a driveway, and was sure I would now miss my appointment and the opportunity to find more Hawards.
I was amazed to find that the driveway led to the St. Mary Church I had passed several times at increasingly high speeds. The thought immediately crossed my mind that perhaps I was supposed to check out this churchyard cemetery. Certain that I’d come back within a few hours, I quickly changed the tire, drove on, and immediately ran across the Walpole Independent Church on a road I was sure I had been on fifteen minutes earlier. David Holmes greeted me warmly with the strong handshake of a man who had worked the land all his life. He rewarded my travels with an informative tour of the late seventeenth-century chapel.
My earlier research had revealed that many Hawards had been christened and married at the church, yet Mr. Holmes confirmed that no Hawards were buried in the tiny cemetery. When I heard this news, I knew that I’d find them at St. Mary, and that the flat tire in the new rental car was too coincidental to ignore. I returned to the churchyard cemetery an hour or so later to find the Hawards of Walpole that I sought. I would have dismissed these events in Suffolk as mere coincidences, had it not been for my experience in North Carolina, eight years before.

A Windless Day
Following a work-related trip, this time to Virginia, I headed south on a Sunday morning to visit the region my Bain ancestors had settled when they emigrated from Scotland. Long before dawn I set out for Wade, North Carolina. An aunt of mine had discovered a Bain family history in the North Carolina State Archives several years before. John Corinth Bain (1862—1930) had written and published the little booklet in 1928, and it detailed the family relations back to our arrival in the Wade area in 1740.
Because of my hobby for flying stunt kites, I had been aware of the wind levels that morning. As in the previous week in Virginia, there was no wind, not even the four- or five-mile-per-hour puffs required for my lightweight stunt kite. No matter. I was on a mission to Wade, North Carolina. The Old Bluff Presbyterian Church awaited me on a bluff high above the Cape Fear River.
A small dirt road wound through the cemetery, past the old white clapboard church, and back to the entrance. I spent the better part of the afternoon in the cemetery, busily photographing dozens of Bain headstones, jotting down all the information that might not be legible in photographs, and noting the family groupings. John C. Bain was buried there as well, several dozen yards from the church on the bluff over the Cape Fear River.
Late into the evening in my hotel room, I transcribed my scribbled notes, examined my charts, and made connections between individuals and families that hadn’t been apparent in the cemetery. There were one or two individuals that I was surprised not to find at Old Bluff, but I assumed they were probably buried in small family plots nearby.
The next morning was as hot and windless as the week before had been; I jumped in the car, heading down the country road toward I-95. But I couldn’t get myself to turn onto the highway; I wasn’t comfortable with the thought of leaving Wade. After a while, I found myself back at the end of the dusty dirt road that led to the Old Bluff Presbyterian Church and cemetery. I reasoned that I might as well stop by for a quick farewell to my ancestors, not knowing when I might be back in that part of the country.
As I drove slowly into the cemetery grounds, I noticed there was no one else there. I parked my car as close to John C. Bain’s plot as possible, leaving my camera gear and notes in the car. This was to be a quick walk through the cemetery, as I had completed all the research that time allowed the day before. Standing in front of one family grouping of headstones, I noticed a smaller stone on the edge of the property, almost in the woods. Not remembering it from the day before, I walked over to see who might be buried in such an out-of-the-way place. I found the headstone of Catherine Graham Bain, the mother who was conspicuously missing from the nearby family grouping.
"Catherine, what are you doing over here?" I asked aloud. "Your whole family is over there! Did something happen?"
I’m not sure why I asked that last question, but I immediately heard a low rumbling. I looked in vain to the sky for distant jets that might be flying by, or for wind that might have made the sound. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I backed away, muttering something like, "Okay, that’s fine, I was just curious. I hope that whatever the reason, you’re resting in peace."
Back near John C. Bain’s gravestone, I stood ready to depart. He had been a rural mail carrier, and it was easy to picture him making his daily rounds. I thanked him (aloud) for all of his years of research and for taking the time to publish his sixteen-page booklet some sixty years earlier, the work that eventually compelled me to visit Old Bluff cemetery. I said goodbye, and stretching out my arms, looked around and bid farewell to the other ancestors.
And then the wind came.
Out of nowhere, a strong wind whipped up behind me. My eyes widened and looking up, I saw the tops of the seventy-five-foot pine trees whipping to and fro. The wind was coming from straight behind me, pushing my hair into my face. I felt no fear, just a heartfelt connection; it was as if these distant relatives were thanking me for acknowledging them, for remembering them, for continuing the family record. It was as if they were sending me on my way with the wind at my back.
After fifteen to twenty seconds, the wind died down substantially. I earnestly thanked them all, especially John, for that wonderful gift. I kept chuckling and looking back, almost in disbelief, as I reluctantly walked to the car and drove out of the dusty cemetery. Just outside the front gates, I stopped the car for one last look at the cemetery. The entire scene was utterly windless, as still and peaceful as a photograph, looking much as it had when I had arrived twenty-four hours earlier. Yet the difference I felt was profound.
I had no trouble driving onto the highway; my business in Wade was now complete. I traveled to Whiteville that day, and didn’t experience a puff of wind until I approached the Wilmington airport the next evening, as I was departing North Carolina.

The Wind at My Back
Before these experiences, I hadn’t believed in anything I couldn’t see or touch. Talk of the hereafter and stories of "other world" experiences often brought a smirk to my face. But the ancestral connection that I had that day at the Old Bluff cemetery forced me to reconsider my belief system and open my mind to that which we can’t necessarily explain. The more recent events in Suffolk–an inexplicable flat tire, a stony memento greeting my open hand, a fallen forebear’s marker revealed by chance–have reinforced my new beliefs. With the wind at my back, I’ll continue researching my family history; each new discovery will be at once a reassurance, and an affirmation.

Christopher C. Bain, the photography director for Barnes & Noble Publishing, has been researching his Bain and Haward ancestors since 1985.