Marriage Arranged by Ancestors?

by Ron Ohnmacht

My e-mail address is yankee@iocnet.net
and I live in Concord, North Carolina.

My wife, Tammy, and I met in 1985 in Broome County, New York. Prior to this our families did not know each other. We married in 1987, and our daughters were born in 1990 and 1992. we lived in Vestal, New York until a employment transfer took us to North Carolina in 1996.

We then got interested in our genealogy when my parents gave us some photo albums which contained pictures of our ancestors from the late 1800's and early 1900's. We started researching my OHNMACHT line and my wifes MCKERCHER line.

We discovered through census records that my gg-grandparents Leo & Barbara Ohnmacht and my wife Tammy's gg- grandparents James & Sarah McKercher both lived near each other in Jermyn,PA in 1900. We often wondered if they had ever known or spoke to each other considering the size of Jermyn, PA then.

It wasn't until October of 1999 that we discovered that both my gg-grandparents Leo & Barbara Ohnmacht, and my wife's gg-grandparents, James & Sarah McKercher were buried in Valley View Cemetery in Montdale, PA! (Near Jermyn)

When we called the curator of the cemetery for more information, we were astounded to find that they are buried in plots right next to each other!!!!

What are the odds of something like this happening?

Submitted:  Thu Dec 30 15:11:31 1999

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