Hello all Thank you very much Peter for all this information. You have been extremely kind and to have given up part of you research week to find this was a wonderful thing to do - and both for Richardson and Thacker. I have the material you have sent off line and am studying it. Best wishes Mary My grateful thanks to all those who answered my query re Roman Catholic > marriages both on and off list. There were a mass of answers. You have given > me a great deal to think about. I do hope that others on the list who have > the same problems found the excellent material on line useful as well. It seems that my doubts that Brailles might have a RC community in the 1790s were misplaced. Warwick Records Office hold transcripts of RC records for Brailles as follows: Births/baptisms 1778-1844 Marriages 1785-1795, 1820-1865 Burials 1785-1789, 1820-1912 Confirmations 1779-1888. There are some RICHARDSON names there, but not your John RICHARDSON. I will send you some details off-list. One detail I found interesting was that the baptisms took place at the home of the parents of the child being baptised. Perhaps there was not a church as such at the time. The period I was looking at (c.1790) predates the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act by some forty years. > St Osgood's seems to be the church in question and I will follow that > through. If it was only finished in 1845 then my great grandparents must > have been among the earliest to have been married there!!! They were married > on 13 April 1846. It seems that there was a community called St Osberg's before the present church was built. Warwick Records Office hold microfilm of 1767-1807. It seems that our best bet for later years is St Chads in Birmingham - something for me to investigate perhaps next time I am in the Midlands Regards Peter