Cousins from opposite sides of the ocean met by complete chance after turning up at their ancestor’s grave at the exact same time and discovering they were all related.

Ian Brandon and Malcolm Atkins from the UK were visiting the grave of their great, great, great, grandfather Anthony Smith only to find another couple from the US doing the same thing.

Rand Smith and his wife Janeel made the 3,700-mile journey from Kansas City to the town of Raunds in Northamptonshire, England, to see where his forefathers originated from.

The couple was left utterly astounded when strangers Ian and Malcolm showed up from London and Essex at the same time last month searching for the same gravestone, having planned their trip years ago.

“You couldn’t make it up. These other guys planned their trip a while ago, too,” said Malcolm, a grandfather-of-two from Harold Hill, East London.

“We met at that precise moment, and now people are saying it’s divine intervention.

“I don’t have a religious bone, but if we arrived half-an-hour later, we wouldn’t have known they were there.

Malcolm and Ian had spent seven years planning the trip to St Peter’s Church after researching his family tree.

“I’m still in shock. We’d been planning it years and years ago, and we finally got together.”

“We’d actually gone up and got the car stuck while trying to find the car park. These two Americans went past the car and smiled as I was stuck.

“Then these two people were literally standing by the headstone of my third great-grandad.”

12 billion-to-one odds

Rand was looking at the headstone and his wife Janeel asked the strangers, “Do you know that person?” Ian answered, “That’s my third great-grandfather”—and that’s when Rand said, “That’s my third great grandfather”.

The three men, who are fourth cousins, learned that their encounter on the same day, September 22, defied the odds of 12 billion-to-one.

“It was amazing, it was like we all knew each other. Then we went to a nearby pub, where we found we had so much in common,” Malcolm told SWNS news agency.

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“We’d love to see him again. I’d love to go to Kansas.”

Ian said the pair in their 70s chose to visit the grave around 100 miles from both their homes last Monday purely by chance.

“We basically turned up together, it was most strange,” Ian, from Danbury, Essex, told SWNS. “They were there two minutes before we were. It was strange, as we were all looking at the same stones.

“We had so much in common. We exchanged emails, so we’ll keep in contact.”

The cousins were visiting the historic market town after discovering Anthony Smith used to own a shoe factory in the area.

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A family tree fanatic, Malcolm discovered Anthony had initially married an American and had eight children before re-marrying, after her death at a ‘quite young’ age, an English lady who he had seven children with.

“My wife Linda always wondered how I could do such a boring hobby. It is just names on a piece of paper, but on one account I’ve got 2,000 names.

“It’s helped us dig into this, which is incredible. You couldn’t have written it. I’m still shocked by it. It’s a day we’ll never forget.”

Rand explained why they traveled to England, “Forty years ago my grandfather travelled from the U.S. and visited the graves of our forefathers at the St. Peter’s Church in Raunds.

“Since that time, I have had the same desire. When my wife, Janeel, and I visited the graveyard and located the headstones, we were stunned to have several others come up and examine the same stones.

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“No one else was in the cemetery. To learn that they are our fourth cousins was absolutely thrilling.

“We went to lunch together and it was like we had known them for years.

“We feel that divine intervention put us together. What a highlight of our lives.”

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