Common Threads

I keep coming across certain common threads in our family history... for example, there are at least two pioneer schoolteachers in our lineage:
1) Ada C Crofford, Fort Lincoln, Dakota Territory, 1876.
2) Anna Lyons Crofford, Liberty Township, Indiana, 1837.
Each began the first school in her territory.

Custer House at Fort Lincoln

Gen. Custer appears in the unrelated stories of both of my maternal grandparents:
1) Ada Crofford, my grandfather's mother (mentioned above), was friends with Mrs. Custer and was teaching school in Fort Lincoln when Custer left to fight the Sioux at Little Big Horn.
2) Eva L. Allen, my grandmother's mother, resided in a mental hospital in Oklahoma that was a former "Camp of Supply" from which Custer left to fight the Cheyenne Indians at the Battle of Washita.

I don't know why but I find this kind of thing fascinating.