Our kindred dead, newly found, and living people too - Part 1

The first week of training, when we worked intensively on our own family lines, I felt like I was standing still. No one emerged from the shadows. I learned technique, but didn't find a soul. Until that first Friday afternoon. Since then, I've received a torrent of discoveries. I'll post them one by one.

I'll begin with Elizabeth. Here's who she is: my father's mother's father's mother. She was born in Laycock, Wiltshire, England and had a whole family before her husband died and she met and married Charles Wilcox Tanner, in Calne, Wiltshire. They had 3 little boys and came with them to the US in 1853. Their youngest, Charles, was my grandmother's father.

Previously, we (I plus my great researcher-daughter Elizabeth aka Bonnie) knew that her maiden name was Wheeler because we found her marriage certificate for her first marriage, and it was given there. But I didn't know her parents.

So I went to the FHL (Family History Library, here in Salt Lake) and got out a microfilm for Laycock in the early 1800s (actually 1550 to 1900, approx.). I went through painstakingly - the pages were shadowed with age long before they were microfilmed - until I reached approximately the right date. And there she was: Elizabeth, dau of Joseph and Sarah Wheeler, christened 7 Jul 1807.

So now we knew the parents. The natural question was whether they had other children. I plugged the parents' names into ancestry.com's England and Wales Christening Records, and found all 9 of their children.

I've now put them together as a family in PAF and in New Family Search.

I love putting families together! I was able to determine from the dates of their christenings that there were probably no missing children for this family.

Joseph and Sarah are my great great great grandparents. Now I wonder who their parents were? Next step: marriage record in Laycock, around 1805, in the same microfilm.