Since I've been here in SLC, I've been spending at least 8-10 hours a week at the Family History Library downtown. This means I've been able to tackle and confirm the big question to verify just WHO were the siblings and parents of our oldest known CHARLES PLAYER and ANN, whom I learned were the parents of our original immigrant ancestor WILLIAM WARNER PLAYER.

I used Cecil R. Humphery-Smith's The Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers to be sure of the NAME of the church, since it had been a number of years since I did the research, and that notebook is still back in Florida. I determined that there is no "Old St. Luke" but there IS a St. Luke's Old Street in Chelsea, Middlesex, England. We knew that William reported his birthplace as Chelsea, Middlesex, England. The birth records didn't begin until 1832 in England, so we rely on church parish records of christening to determine parents. I had previously unearthed his christening date of 7 Feb 1784, and sent you a photocopy of it framed. It lists parents as "Charles Player and Ann."

The theory is to work back through the christening records to find all other children listed as children of the same parents. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there were not a lot of PLAYERS in the parish. From this we find that apparently our

Charles PLAYER (b.about 1758-of Chelsea,Middlesex,England)

sp: Ann WARNER (b.Abt 1761-of Chelsea,Middlesex,England) They had the following children:

• Mary PLAYER (c.7 Aug 1782-Chelsea,Yorkshire,England)
• Charles PLAYER (b.7 Feb 1783-Chelsea,Yorkshire,England)
• Jeremiah PLAYER (c.9 Feb 1785-Chelsea,Yorkshire,England)
• Ann PLAYER (c.25 Mar 1787-Chelsea,Yorkshire,England)
• Elizabeth PLAYER (c.18 Oct 1789-Chelsea,Yorkshire,England)
• Eleanor Jane PLAYER (c.12 Jun 1791-Chelsea,Yorkshire,England)
• OUR ANCESTOR William Warner PLAYER (chr.3 Mar 1793-Chelsea,Middlesex,England;d.20 Feb 1873-Salt Lake City, Salt Lake,Utah,USA) who married sp: Zillah SANDERS (b.25 Jul 1788-Maidenhead,Berkshire,England;m.1821;d.3 Dec 1867-Salt Lake City,Salt Lake,Utah,USA)

WARNER is the maiden name of Charles' wife Ann. How did I discover that? I went back through the same parish records, but this time for marriages, I discovered a marriage entry in the parish records for one Charles PLAYER 1 Jan 1781 and Ann WARNER. You will note this predates the christening of their eldest child Mary in 1782.

I suspect a sibling of Ann's could be Thomas WARNER who married Mary ALLEN 16 June 1771.

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WHAT TO DO NEXT?
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Check the christening records for Ann WARNER to determine her parents. I would postulate the christening would be around 1761, but this could be off, as the records did not indicate how old she was when she married. There were two older generation WARNERs in the parish, that could be her parents, but I won't mention them in this email, as it will only confuse the issue. I merely need more time to work through the microfilm of the St. Luke's Old Street parish registers.

Some of the records are on microfilm in the original. Some of the records which are not available on microfilm for the time period we need have been extracted through the Name Extraction Program on film. The Name Extraction Program is considered a highly reliable interpretation of the old-style handwriting, since 2 individuals independently extract each parish entry, and a computer compares their abstract, keystroke for keystroke.

Dad, I believe you participated in a similar extraction project for the Ellis Island Records project, now esteemed of great value to those tracing immigrants arriving in the US through the port of New York. That database includes some 25 million people who arrived between 1892-1924. It is freely searchable at: www.ellisislandrecords.org

This is my report,
Love you,