My great-great-great-great grandmother, Mary Ann Pettley (née Lucking died in April 1850 in Latchingdon, Essex, aged 75 years. I have her death certificate, but no other General Register Office evidence of her life because she was born, married and had her babies long before civil registration began in July 1837.

From searching the parish register for Latchingdon, where I knew my branch of the Pettleys came from, I found out about Mary Ann's husband, John Pettley, b aptised in Latchingdon in 1770, and their marriage (in 1795), and some of their children - starting with Daniel Pettley, from whom I am descended. I also found numerous Luckings. But I had never found any record of Mary Ann's birth or bapti sm. For this reason, she seemed a good subject for a search on the International Genealogical Index (IGI) when it went online at www.familysearch.org in May 199 9. If I could find a record of her baptism, then I might be able to find her par ents and go back one more generation.

I started by selecting the Custom S earch option from the Familysearch and then selected IGI from the list. When the search form for the IGI came up I entered "Mary Lucking" in the fields for Firs t Name and Last Name. Then I chose the Birth/Christening option from the Event f ield, selected a search of the records of + or - 5 years, and entered 1770 in th e Year field. Finally, I selected British Isles from the drop-down list of count ries in the Region field, before clicking on search. The IGI results listed 12 p ossible entries, five of them for the same child, Mary Luckin, born in Little Wa ltham in Essex, about 16 miles north of Latchingdon, but in 1769, not 1775. The only entry for a child born in 1775 was for a Polly Lucking born in Terling in E ssex, a bit further north but closer to Goldhanger, where I knew of a family con nection. When I searched through my old notes, I discovered I had already made a family connection to Terling, via descendants of Mary Ann's brother, John. Poll y, of course, is the pet form of the name Mary Ann.

I clicked on the name to find the IGI record, which gives the date and location of the christening, p lus the parents' names (Thos. Lucking and Polly). The IGI doesn't hold a record of the marriage of Mary Ann Lucking to John Pettley, but it does have the marria ge of Mary Ann's parents, in Terling on 12 September 1774, and (unusually) a mai den surname for the mother (Polly Symons). I then carried out a Parent Search fo r Thomas Lucking and Polly which returned two more christenings, apart from Poll y's - those of her younger sister Ann Martha (in 1776) and her younger brother J ohn (1778). To carry out a parent search only, fill in the left-hand fields (Fat her and Mother) of the IGI search page and the region. You must have at least a first name for the mother.

I also carried out a search for the Pettleys o n the Ancestor Search engine, the first option that comes on the screen when you enter the Familysearch site. Here I discovered an ancestral file for John Pettl ey and Mary Ann, only here she is identified as Mary Larkin (Lucking) and the da te of birth is given as "about 1775, in Latchingdon", which I knew not to be the case. There is also a pedigree list of the children of John and Mary Ann Pettle y, most of which is confirmed by my own search of the Latchingdon parish registe r. I haven't tried to make contact with the US researcher who submitted this Ged com, which is the standard file format for genealogists. To do so, I would have clicked on the Details button. Chances are he is a distant relative, as one of M ary Ann and John's grandsons emigrated to Canada in the early part of the twenti eth century.

Elsewhere on the internet, I've made contact with several pe ople researching the Luckins of Terling and Luckings and Petleys (with one "t") in Essex. I did this by visiting the Essex pages on Genuki, clicking on the Surn ames List and following the instructions.

The Genuki Essex pages led me t o an article on village labourers before the 1832 Reform Act, written in 1911. I also found a list of reference works, including parish register transcriptions going back to the seventeenth century, 1851 census indexes and a Trade Directory for Essex from 1839, with links to volunteers who will check them for you (www. fortunecity.com/victorian/ cloisters/116/ess.html).

A general search for "Maldon + England" led me to the www.maldon.co.uk web page, which carries articl es on the history of this area. From there I linked to Ian Rose's Essex Churches page www.debkay.clara.net. Here I found photographs of Latchingdon's parish chu rch, where many of Mary Ann and John Pettley's grandchildren and great-grandchil dren were christened and married, and the parish church at Terling. It all took two and a half hours.