Thanks, Joy and Debra, for the advice about looking for Anna Thomas's birth and marriage in county records. I have no idea what county she was born in, I'm afraid -- in fact, I don't even know the names of the counties in Virginia or anything about the county system within states, which means a geography lesson, I guess. (We don't have counties in Western Canada, although they do in the Eastern provinces.) Looks like I approach all the ones listed in Rootsweb, one after another. As we have a household rule restricting each of us in the family to only 15 minutes a day connected to the Internet, and I'm researching all lines, all branches, on both sides of my family at once, this is going to take a while but I'll get there eventually! As for so many of the records being burned in various wars, wouldn't it be ironic if the ones I'm looking for were destroyed in the War of 1812, when Anna's husband Mark Chase was in the Canadian militia and was part of the march on Washington where they burned the Library of Congress? Maybe he destroyed his own marriage record en route -- not knowing how much that was going to annoy his great-great-great-great-granddaughter. How terribly thoughtless of him ( : D )! Thanks again. Margaret Gibbs Richmond, BC