When we made our decision to apply for the EOI (Expression of Interest) to New Zealand, we told my grandmother (my dad's mom). She said you have cousins who live there. I thought no way - she can't be right. I never heard of anyone in our family being from New Zealand. She got in touch with my grandfather's sister and true enough I have distant cousins living in New Zealand. I, of course, got in touch with one of them (JF) and soon enough, one of the others got in touch with me (YF). I was so excited. First I love knowing my family heritage especially going so far back and second it is so nice to have some sort of connection to where we want to move to! Well just like I'd already heard about all New Zealanders they are both so friendly, offering advice, saying anything they can do to help to let them know, etc. They were all open arms and welcoming and now looking forward to meeting us. So now we have at least two and maybe up to 11 family members to visit there. There are I believe 9 of them, with children and grandchildren. I've had contact with two of them so far. Here I was all worried my story would sound crazy when I made the call to JF the first time. Of course though when I started dropping names, she knew who I was talking about.
Now let's see if I can get the story written down properly. My grandfather's great grandparents (W.F. & M.D.) were relations to my cousins now living in New Zealand (JF & YF).
W.F. & M.D. had 4 children, 3 who went to New Zealand (P, M & Mi) and one who stayed in Ireland (J). M was JF & YF's great grandmother and J was my great great grandfather. Confused yet? Well, it might not be a direct connection, but what a small world it is and we are connected.
picture from: davidandcarole.info
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