For the last few days I've been looking again at a brickwall I have in the family tree, which stops at Lydia Richardson, who married William Mansfield in St Andrews, Chesterton, Cambridge on 13 October 1776. There was no father's name, always annoying. It declared Lydia was "of this parish", but that doesn't necessarily mean that she was born there, just that she lived there and had been living there for awhile. It could even have been an assumption, or a misunderstanding of the question being asked. Witnesses were a Robert Johnson and Mary Johnson. I was hoping this might lead to a hook up/link at some point (clutching straws is my middle name these days!). Robert and Mary had married four years earlier; she'd been from Chesterton and he was from Burwell- I wonder how they knew them! Was Lydia local and had Mary been her friend from childhood, or did Robert work with William?
This record can be found on FreeREG easily enough and, to that point, I know my 'facts' are correct. Lydia is correctly in the tree, in the right position, but where did she come from? For months I've had no clue. It was a dead end. But then I got a "sniff of a clue". Now, a sniff of a clue is a clue, so I pursued it. Having discovered (but not seen) a random tree on Ancestry that indicated she might have a birthdate of 1752 I followed that line of enquiry. I figured if I could discover Lydia Richardson's baptism then I'd have more clues available to me. It didn't take me long to track down a random Lydia Richardson - but it didn't "feel right". Often you have a nose for these things, whether something feels like you might be on the right track, or not.
But, with no other clues presently available (without spending money on multiple parish register transcriptions), I figured I'd follow that sniff and see where it ended up.
What I found, on FreeREG, was a Lydia Richardson baptised in Stanground, Huntingdonshire (this is now part of Cambridgeshire). What that entry told me was that Lydia was baptised on 30 November 1752, to parents John and Lydia. Looking at more records showed that they'd already had/lost a previous Lydia (1750-1752). Next stop, burials - and I couldn't find any concrete evidence of this Lydia having been buried or married within the parish of Stanground.
I then spent way too many hours plotting out this rather large family to see if anything lead me in the direction of Chesterton. It wasn't easy going - and is now another incomplete project. It seems that John Richardson always had 1-3 sons called John Richardson, who often died early ... and after a few generations you had many Johns kicking about and the burial registers just saying John had died, but not specifying which one. There were even two families of John/Elizabeth kicking about at the same time, with all kids being registered to parents John/Elizabeth, so, again, you'd not know which pair!
So, nothing gave me confidence that this Lydia Richardson is the right one. But, once you've discovered a "possible", you can never tell when another clue will either make it all stack up or not. Unless I can find a legitimate link/reason for her to up sticks and move it doesn't grab me as a possible.
I am not convinced it's the right Lydia at all - and I've even seen evidence of a Richardson family living in Chesterton at the time, but not being good enough to baptise their children at the church where parish registers have been transcribed!
I doubt I'll get answers this side of a few years at this rate. Lydia .... you're out there somewhere!
In the meantime, for anybody who is looking for the Richardson family at Stanground, Huntingdonshire, below is what I made of them at my first attempt..... needs more work/research to verify any of this is correct. Of the 10 children they produced, they seem to have only managed to retain three long enough to get them married off. They had three Johns before one survived and two Lydias. The twins are a tiny bit intriguing though as there are twins in other parts of my tree, but maybe I'm clutching at straws and I bet many people have twins with a tree large enough!
I just checked the parish records for Huntingdonshire to see that eight parishes had updates on 19 July, which I've listed below. 
