Mary Lou, One day I'm going to find a link to one of your families. I keep seeing your name with all these familiar Bedford surnames, but just can't clinch a connection. Summerfield is another we have in common, although mine is not a direct line. Ann Summerfield married into my Sharp line from around Ampthill / Maulden / Clophill in 1820. Because the name caught my eye, I did a bit of checking. Unfortunately, I didn't find much, but I might be able to provide some clues or eliminate possibilities. The bad news is, the surname looks pretty common in Bedfordshire. I've found them in Dunstable, Bedford and Clophill. You also found them in Lilley, Herts. Significantly, with the fairly comprehensive IGI coverage of Bedfordshire parish records, a parent search using Thomas & Martha didn't reveal any other children in Bedford or surrounding counties. I think the nearest was Uttoxeter, Staffordshire. This lends weight to your non-conformist theory. One thing that I did find at Lilley was a 1795 christening of a Sarah to Richard Summerfield and Ann. You might like to investigate as it seems Richard could be a brother to Thomas. Another line of investigation is Martha b1774 at Crawley Green, Luton. Do you know how to search with just a given name ? Using the Hugh Wallis batch site at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers.htm#PageTitle you will see that there are only two available batches in Luton covering 1774. Batch C090831 from the Baptist Church covers 1769-1836. Batch C016753 from St Marys covers 1719-1812. If you click on the batch numbers, go into the batch and then use refine search, you can look up all the christenings for the name Martha. You will find only 2 on the Baptist batch but lots on St Mary's. But by narrowing the search period, you can get a short list of 10-12 Martha's. Then by process of elimination using marriage records, you will get down to just a couple. Something to do to fill in those cold nights in Vancouver. Peter in Sydney