Six generations at Berkeley
The line this archive called untestable, tested. Three baptism dates match the family tree to the day across a hundred and thirty years.
For most of this archive's life the Saniger line was the thing it could not test. Six generations of it came from a family tree, and FreeREG's transcript of Berkeley St Mary the Virgin stops in 1677. Every one of those generations is now on a parish record, and the tree was right at every step.
The chain, oldest first
father of the next · named as father in the baptism of 12 October 1679
Tree: — — The deepest Saniger this archive can reach. He is a name in a register and nothing else.
baptised Berkeley 12 OCTOBER 1679 · father WILLIAM Saniger
Tree: b. 12 Oct 1679, Berkeley — The tree's date to the day.
baptised Berkeley 12 DECEMBER 1711 · father WILLIAM Saniger
Tree: b. 11 Dec 1711, Berkeley — Born the 11th, christened the 12th — the ordinary interval.
baptised Berkeley 23 AUGUST 1744 · father THOMAS Saniger
Tree: b. 23 Aug 1744, Berkeley — The tree's date to the day. Buried at Berkeley 24 January 1819, aged 75.
married Berkeley 10 APRIL 1769
Tree: not in the tree at all — John was christened five weeks later. Catherine Cotton is a name this archive had never held.
baptised Berkeley 18 MAY 1769 · father THO'S Saniger
Tree: b. 15 May 1769, Berkeley — Buried at Berkeley 16 January 1825, aged 55 — the tree says 10 March 1824, ten months early.
baptised HANNAH SANIGOR at Berkeley, 18 AUGUST 1804 · father JNO SANIGOR
Tree: b. 23 Jul 1805, Berkeley — Found 13 September 2026 under a spelling this site's alias list did not carry. The tree's day and month may be sound and its year one out; there is no second Hannah and no burial between.
It was right, and I could not see it
Three baptism dates match the tree to the day, across a hundred and thirty years. One death date is ten months out. One marriage — Thomas Saniger to Catherine Cotton in 1769 — the tree did not have at all. On the evidence the compiler of this tree had seen the Berkeley register, or something copied faithfully from it, and this archive spent months treating their work as unevidenced assertion because it could not reach the same book. And the last link closed on the same day: Hannah's own baptism, in the same register, under the spelling SANIGOR.
The two questions left
- Catherine Cotton. Catherine Cotton herself goes no further. She marries at Berkeley in April 1769 and there is no baptism for her in the parish, so where she came from is open — the one new question this work has created rather than closed.
- Hannah's baptism. Hannah's baptism is found. What is left is her mother: the shared tree calls her LYDIA JONES and attaches no record to the claim, and no document in this archive gives Lydia a surname. Why →
Where the name comes from → · The parish → · How these were found →