Dear Listers, This is Part Seven, the final instalment, of how my brick wall fell recently. I have told you a lot about my WFG, but not about his ancestry that this crashing brick wall revealed. As well as the British census records, the IGI and the Naval Records, there was to be even more to be uncovered. I was told of a new website created by the Medway Council. The River Medway is adjacent to the Hoo Peninsula on which my ancestors lived. Part of the website was sponsored by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (another indication of my good luck!). If you have ancestors in the Rochester Archdeaconry of Kent it will be a rewarding trip to take to: http:// cityark.medway.gov.uk/about/medway_archives/. Among other useful documents, it contains images scanned from Parish Register books of the region from the year 604AD to the present. It's an ongoing project, but fortunately for me, the church where my GOODHEWs attended was already digitised. I was able to download the pages that showed baptisms at St Werburgh, Hoo, of all nine children of the family of whom WFG was the youngest; Eliza (1826), George (1828), Emma (1830), Eleanor (1831), Samuel (1833), Edmund (1835), Harriet (1837), Ellen (1838) and my Francis (1840). I also found the marriage of their parents, George and Dorothy, at St. Nicholas, Strood on 22 May 1825. The baptism of George at St Werburgh in 1799 and his burial at the same church on 28 March 1852. Dorothy lived many more years and died at the Union Workhouse in Frindsbury. Her burial record for 7 April 1891 at All Saints Church was also on this website! George Snr had at least two brothers that I have been able to find; Abraham (older) and William (younger). The records show that their parents were Abraham GOODHEW and Mary ?. So that is where my brick wall has moved. But it is ever so much lower than that of WFG, which came tumbling down just months ago. More recently I have been able to use Google Earth to see fairly clear images of Hoo St Werburgh and North Street Hoo, where my ancestors lived. I can see the St Werburgh graveyard where George is buried, but sadly cannot read the inscription on his headstone. Again, I was lucky that the area around Medway was shown in high resolution on Google Earth. Many other parts of the globe, like the Hunter Valley of NSW, have yet to have hi-res photos taken from the satellites. But despite its weaknesses, Google Earth is a useful resource. If you would like to find out more, visit its website at: http://earth.google.com/ . You will probably need a broadband connection to use this fascinating facility with any success. Well, I believe I have broken down the WFG brick wall, but there are always those niggling doubts. Was that Francis GOODHEW really my WFG? On the positive side, his birth certificate showed exactly the date I had been carrying around for years. His naval service checked out with WFG's obit. His desertion of the merchant ship in Newcastle Harbour confirmed the rumour about WFG and his time of arrival in Oz was about right. On the negative front, WFG's death certificate shows his father's name as Edward and his age as 74 years, where we know he had a further three months to live to attain that age. But, did he talk to his family about his ancestors? They may never have known about George and Dorothy? Anyway, it would seem that the only sure way to dispel these doubts would be to conduct some DNA tests. Are there readers out there with experience of the use of DNA testing for genealogy? I understand that I need an unbroken male line to be sure of the results. That would mean that I would need to find a living male descendant of George (Jnr), Samuel, or Edmund in order to confirm this. As yet I haven't traced those lines, and may never be able to. I have found numerous living 3rd to 5th cousins from this exercise, but none of them descend from my male GOODHEWs. However, the lesson for readers here is that one should never give up. Even after years of frustration, you might just receive the handouts of luck, like the ones I was fortunate to find. I trust you have enjoyed my story and that it has inspired you to continue your search. Ron Goodhew, Adamstown. My surnames are: GOODHEW, CARROLL, TEASDALE, PHIPPEN, VINCENT, BAILEY, WAKELING, DAVEY, LUXFORD, PAYNE, BOYD, MORGAN, WRIGHT, SPEAR, RAMSTER, ARCHINAL, JOLIFFE, HEWSTON, HODGINS to mention just a few.