What Are You Doing Here?

All of us that do genealogy research have those “huh?” moments. 
In my case, a lot of my “huh?” moments are related to locations and why I find people where I find them or how our paths have crossed in random places generations later.  Most of my direct ancestors were born or immigrated to, married, died and were buried within 5 bordering cities/counties in Maryland and Pennsylvania.  Sounds like my research would be a piece of cake then doesn’t it? Pffft!
Anyway…I can usually take a pretty good guess where to find people when I’m looking for them, but a few have popped up in some unusual places. Unusual because they are places that I did not expect.
My craziest ‘huh?’ moment  involves my Aunt Florence Henry and Uncle Francis Penn.  I never met Aunt Florence and Uncle Frank, nor does my mother have a strong memory of them.  Aunt Florence, along with my maternal great grandmother Ruth Henry Pisani and their sister Aunt Bessie Henry Cantville were born in Baltimore City, MD.  They grew up in Baltimore City and they met and married men who lived in Baltimore City.  Aunt Florence and Uncle Frank moved to the Eastern Shore of Maryland (I still haven’t gotten an explanation of why they moved there), a couple hours away from Baltimore after marrying and lived out their days there.  I hadn’t done a lot of research on them because, well, I just hadn’t.  All I had where some census records and basic birth and death dates I had gotten from a distant cousin.  I figured when it came time to research them I’d find them on the eastern shore.  And then…
One day a few years ago I was meeting a friend for dinner who lived in an area that I had never encountered any family connections.  I arrived way early and next door to where we were meeting was a public library.  So I decided to “waste” the extra time in library.  Of course I headed straight to the local history section and just started browsing through some cemetery transcription books they had.  I wasn’t looking for anyone in particular, and wasn’t expecting to find anyone in my family, like I said, no connection to this area.  But, still I looked in the index for my main research surnames.  I came across a listing for ‘Henry’. OK, granted Henry isn’t as common as Smith but, there are Henrys out there that aren’t related to me, although I have Henrys on both sides of my tree that I have not connected. I turned to the page and found “Florence Henry Penn, w/o Francis S Penn”. Wait, what?  It can’t be MY Florence Henry and Francis Penn.  Why would they be buried in a cemetery here?  I looked at the dates and found they were the same.
Oh course at this point I wanted to ditch my friend, I was losing daylight.  If I hurried I could get to the cemetery with a sliver of light left!  I took a breath, came to my senses, the cemetery wasn’t going anywhere, I could visit the next day.  I did, it was them and I found out that had I researched them earlier, although Uncle Francis wasn’t born and didn’t live in this town, his family has a strong connection to this area.
So I learned to never pass up an opportunity to poke around in a “random” location, you may just be surprised.