Serendipity, kismet, happenstance. It's odd how often those words wrap around the first time two people meet.

It certainly was the case with the folks on the right, my great-grandparents, who everyone knew as Bert and Tess, but who had been baptized Cuthbert and Letitia.

Gee, do you think there was a reason they used nicknames?

Bert had been born near Birmingham, England, the son of a family who owned a cotton mill. He was the youngest son, so when the time came to pass on the family business it went to his older brother and Bert became what was known as a remittance man.

There were lots of those drifting around the British colonies back then, younger sons of English families who had been sent overseas with a generous allowance, men who had a limited future in England. Bert decided to try his luck in Canada, specifically in Ottawa where there was a lumber boom happening.

He'd been in Ottawa a few weeks when he decided to do a little tourism, take a steamer up the river. As he was leaning on the railing enjoying the view, a young child who was racing around the decks plowed into him, almost knocked him over.

The woman who was taking care of the child, who normally would never ever have spoken to a stranger, came over and apologized profusely for her young cousin's rudeness. Yes, the babysitter was Letitia, the lady with the amazing hat.

Bert was smitten.

Enquiries were made, her address ascertained, and they began a correspondence. It was formal at first (Letitia wasn't one to jump into anything I've heard) but gradually it warmed. Over the course of their letters, and strictly chaperoned Sunday afternoon meetings in the parlour of Letitia's parents' home, they explained themselves to each other, spoke about their dreams and fears, and eventually, after their engagement, what they hoped for in their marriage.

It was a happy marriage by all accounts. Bert found work as a bookkeeper and accountant for a lumber mill, kept a farm on the side as people did back then. That's where my grandfather Percy, the travelling hardware salesman, met my grandmother Lillian, Bert and Letitia's daughter.

I had a very hard time finding documents about Letitia and about the marriage of her parents Daniel and Ann Eliza (of the ugly houseplant fame). My family preserved a lot of information, but oddly enough not these two bits.

Persistant digging in church records all over the Ottawa Valley paid off, and much to my surprise I found that Daniel and Anne Eliza appear to have eloped because they married far from home. Even more surprising, for the time, was that Letitia had been born only three days after her parents' marriage in 1872. Oh my.

There's a story there, eh.