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...my great-grandfather hadn't survived growing up in a family nearly destroyed by tuberculosis.
In Massachusetts in the mid 1800s, my ggf's father was an only child. His mother and her four siblings died of tuberculosis in quick succession. Only her and one of her sister's had lived long enough to marry and reproduce - the ggf and his sisters all of whom died young. The sisters, that is. As a result, my ggf and his one cousin were the sole survivors for that branch of the family tree. He went on to marry and have four sons, the youngest my gf.
When/where did your existence today "squeak through" because of a sole survivor or a fortunate event?
My g-g-g-grandmother gave birth to 10 children. Four lived long enough to produce children of their own. Of those four, one died after giving birth to an only child. That only child was my g-grandmother.
Of those four surviving branches, the one that produced a my g-grandmother actually created the largest pool of descendants from my g-g-g grandparents. I've researched the other three lines and found that one line produced a single son who was killed while serving in the military, the other two produced few children and has eventually petered out to just a few descendants.
I wouldn't be here if my mother's husband didn't abuse her. She met my father, who treated her well...and here I am! Surprise, surprise! She had 9 kids, he had 6, and I'm the only one from both of them.
Or there was that one Viking who invaded Gascony around 800AD, who had a son with a Basque woman and gave the boy his name...
Honestly, if you really think about it, it is totally fascinating to realize that if one man hadn't met one woman or simply passed them in the street instead of somehow connecting with them, we would not be here. Think about all the people you pass by everyday without a glance. All those lives that will never be. It's pretty amazing that we're here at all.
I wouldn't be here if it weren't for World War II. My dad was drafted into the U.S. Army, and he was sent to England, where my mother lived. They met at a USO dance. Eventually they married in England and my mother came to the U.S. on a ship full of war brides shortly before I was born. Many of those marriages didn't last but my parents' did for 42 years before my dad died.
I'm here because of my Mother, but not because she gave birth to me. In reference to me, my Dad would tell his friends; "This is the only stray pup my wife would let me bring home."
My paternal grandmother was a slave to the Japanese army during WWII and escaped their concentration camps they built for Koreans during that time. She jumped off a train that was transporting thousands of Korean women and traveled back to South Korea and then to the United States after the war. Had she not done so, she wouldn't have met my grandfather and I would not be here, nor as good looking, like I am today.
I don't really have anything that "close call" that could have stopped my existence. My great great grandfather was one of fourteen children. Seven of them died before adulthood, but that still isn't that close of a call.
I'm sure there's all sorts of circumstances that had they been slightly different, we wouldn't be here today. It doesn't necessarily have to do with near-death. For example, had my great grandfather not left his home town and family farm in Wisconsin to travel south and make his own way in wife, he never would have met my great grandmother in Alabama. And had they not moved to Pennsylvania after their marriage, my grandmother never would have met my grandfather.
And of course most Americans can safely say that had their ancestors not immigrated to the US, they would not be here today.
I did recently learn of a serious car accident my other great grandfather was in - he had a punctured lung, broken ribs, and a "badly lacerated face, cut from ear to ear". But this was long after his son, my maternal grandfather, was born so even if he'd died, it wouldn't have influenced his descendancy.
My ggggggrandfather (or so) came as a convict right after the transportation act was passed. The generation before his family had lived in the rural area outside London which was being enclosed for sheep and displacing the residents who largely migrated to London and lived how they could. If he and his brother hadn't stolen that shirt, and been caught and along with a customer been transported to Maryland, I wouldn't be me. He didnt marry for twelve years, but it was to a woman born in Maryland, and given the class restrictions of the time, probably the daughter of 'servants'. He took off to Kentucky and his brother to W.Virginia, marrying his customer. And the rest is history.
If he hadn't been caught, he'd have lived and died in the backstreets of London in Dicken's world.
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