Behind the paywall
A marriage this archive had never found, and four generations it had called untestable. All of it was one subscription away, and none of it was ever missing.
Two of this archive's oldest walls came down in an afternoon, and neither was a wall. The coverage page had measured every free index honestly and concluded that certain records could not be reached. They could be reached. They cost money.
Robert D'Arcy married Jean Ward
ROBERT DARCY married JEAN WARD at PORTSEA ST MARY on 21 JUNE 1779.
Joseph D'Arcy, baptised Portsea St Mary 19 March 1780, SON, father ROBERT, mother JEAN — the Hampshire Genealogical Society's own transcription, independent of the FreeREG entry this archive has been quoting.
Put beside what the archive already holds, the shape of a life appears: married at Portsea in June 1779, a son christened there in March 1780, a daughter married at Chatham in 1806 with that son signing as witness, a colonelcy gazetted in 1813, and a burial at Chatham in May 1827 aged seventy-six. Chatham → · The Hornby claim →
Joseph had no brothers or sisters at Portsea
Test: John Smith at Portsea, 1770–1794, in FindMyPast's Hampshire collections. Result: Portsea St Mary baptisms come back for 1770, 1771, 1772, 1774, 1775, 1779, 1782 (twice), 1785, 1786, 1788 (twice), 1789, 1790, 1791 and 1792 — continuous across the whole window, where FreeREG holds twenty-two months.
Which is not the same as saying they had one child. A regiment moves. The couple married at Portsea in 1779, baptised Joseph there in 1780, and by 1806 a daughter was marrying at Chatham — the children in between will be in garrison parishes this search has not touched. a parish, not a life
The page that said this could not be tested →
The generations that were never untestable
The archive has said for months that five of the tree's six Saniger generations could not be tested because FreeREG's Berkeley transcript stops in 1677. Every one of the following is a Berkeley record from after 1677.
| Who | Event | Date | Parish | What it names |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thomas Saniger The tree gives 23 August 1744 at Berkeley. The same day. | baptised | 23 Aug 1744 | Berkeley | father THOMAS Saniger |
| Thomas Saniger A name this archive has never had. John was baptised five weeks later. | married | 10 Apr 1769 | Berkeley | to CATHERINE COTTON |
| Jn'o Saniger The tree gives John's birth as 15 May 1769. Baptised three days later. | baptised | 18 May 1769 | Berkeley | father THO'S Saniger |
| William Saniger Hannah's brother. | baptised | 6 Sep 1801 | Berkeley | father JOHN Saniger |
| Jno Saniger Hannah's brother. | baptised | 18 Sep 1803 | Berkeley | father JNO Saniger |
| Thos Saniger Hannah's brother. | baptised | 3 Jul 1808 | Berkeley | father JOHN Saniger |
| Thomas Saniger Born about 1744. The tree says he died about 1819. | buried | 24 Jan 1819 | Berkeley St Mary the Virgin | AGED 75 |
| John Saniger Born about 1769. The tree says he died on 10 March 1824 — ten months out. | buried | 16 Jan 1825 | Berkeley St Mary the Virgin | AGED 55 |
Hannah herself is still missing from the index. Hannah's own baptism is not in the index. Her father's children appear at Berkeley in 1801, 1803 and 1808, and the tree puts her birth on 23 July 1805 — exactly in the space between. That is a gap in a transcription, not an absence in a register: FamilySearch's England Births & Baptisms is not a complete copy of Berkeley St Mary, and the original book is what will settle it.
Two things the tree had wrong
| The tree says | The register says |
|---|---|
| John Saniger died 10 March 1824 at Berkeley | Buried at Berkeley St Mary the Virgin on 16 JANUARY 1825, aged 55. The tree is ten months early. |
| Hannah Saniger was born at Berkeley on 23 July 1805 | Not yet found, but her father's other children are baptised there in 1801, 1803 and 1808, and the 1851 census gives her birthplace as Berkeley. |
What this says about everything else here
This archive has been careful about coverage and careless about one word. It measured what the free indexes hold, correctly, and then let not reachable from here become not there. Those are different sentences and only one of them is about the past.