I had a call from a friend at the beginning of the week. We had not talked since the FGS Conference in Austin, Texas, last September, and it was great to reconnect. In the course of our phone visit, he told me that his genealogical research world had recently suffered a severe setback.

It seems that he was born near the end of World War II, and his research had recently taken him into researching his father's military service records. He had always been told that he was a “seven-month baby”--a premature arrival, but suddenly the U.S. military records revealed that his father was serving abroad until three months before the birth. Obviously, something wasn't quite right here. When my friend confronted his mother with his findings and the documents he'd received from the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri, he told me that “she turned four shades of red and then a shade of green,” at which point she began to cry.

Yes, it turned out that while her husband was away at war, she had had an affair and she became pregnant. Her parents, while shocked, acted responsibly and arranged for her to visit and stay with a relative in another state until the baby was born. When her husband was discharged, he returned home to his wife and learned the awful truth that she had been unfaithful to him. To make a long story short, the husband ultimately forgave the wife he loved, the couple did stay together, and the child was raised as “their own.”

We all encounter circumstances and events in our family history research that surprise us. Some of them are good surprises while others may be shocking, even in today's more relaxed society. In "Along Those Lines . . ." this week, I want to discuss how we should view these surprises and how they can explain a lot of mysteries, ultimately opening up other research avenues...

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