Dear listers, Today I learned a very very important lesson, which I want to share with you all, even though this happened out of this list's area. When we are tracing our family history, don't take it for granted that we will find a marriage in the time frame we expect for the people we are researching. For some time now I have been trying to find the marriage of my great grandparents, Edward James Nixey and Sarah Jane Nicholls in the Somerset area. Their first child was born in 1892, and some very kind and helpful people spent time and effort in checking the bmd images for me, all to no avail. One person sent me the link to the Bath BMD website where he had found Sarah Jane Nicholls birth, and I decided to take a look at that website myself. I checked the marriage index for Edward and Sarah, but, I too found nothing during the 1890s. So I resigned myself to the fact that they just never married. WRONG!!!!! The only reason why I found them was because I decided to do a surname search, and see what other Nixey marriages had taken place. When I finally reached 1938, who did I find? You guessed it! Edward James Nixey and Sarah Jane Nicholls! 1938!!!! At that time their ages would have been: Edward approx 75 and Sarah approx 71. So if you have been trying to find a marriage of an ancestor then don't stop looking until you have reached the time of their death!!! You may be as surprised as I was! I feel this is such an important lesson, that I am willing for this email to be passed on to other rootsweb lists or individuals with an interest in genealogy. Kindest regards to all, Jon