Dear List, Firstly, could anyone tell me if they have any record of the family of James and Mary MEREDITH on the (June) 1841 census. Their daughters Margaret and Sophia were baptised in Brilley in 1822. Margaret married the first of her three husbands in August of that year at Eardisley parish church with Sophia as a witness so they must have been alive and in the area two months beforehand but I can't find them. James and Mary are a real enigma all round so any documentary evidence of them is vital. I can't even find their marriage which is very odd and neither can I find any other children - there must have been more becuase Mary was born in about 1778 so probably didn't have her first child in 1821 at the age of 43. Secondly, If anyone here has ancestors 'missing' from the records in the late 1790's, 1800's or 1810's then here is a possible explanation. My ancestor Thomas Phillips was baptised in Marden in 1781. He isn't to be found in the Marden records again until 1819 when one of his many children was baptised back in the ancestral parish. Somehow in the early 1800's, he had joined the Royal South Gloucestershire Militia. By 1807 he was stationed in Brighton where he married Lydia Trevett and baptisd three of his children there in 1808, 1809 and Jan. 1811 - the latter being Richard (Trevet) Phillips who was married to Elizabeth Duggan back in Marden in 1833. In March 1811 they moved on to Plymouth in Devon and were there until 1813 when they moved on to Bristol. So, the rest of these Phillips children could be in the records anywhere in the southern counties. The French threat ceased in 1815 with victory at Waterloo so all the soldiers went back home. Thomas returned home with his ne! w wife Lydia, probably soon after, but don't appear in the Marden records until they baptised their first 'Marden child' 4 years later. Thomas died in 1832 aged 52 and Lydia probably died between 1837 and 1841. Best wishes James Phillips-Evans