Lost in the Fold

Recalling Aunt Lucy’s fruitless years of research, I knew it wouldn’t be easy locating records on Robert Mugleston, my husband’s direct-line great-grandfather. Nevertheless, I’d been bitten by the genealogy bug and looked forward to going to England with my cousins and sister-in-law as part of a research tour.

The brief entry on our pedigree chart—“Robert, about 1715, of Diseworth”—wasn’t much to go on, but it would have to do. Once we were in Leicester, England, a county comprising Diseworth, we began a search of all available records. I’d already combed the microfilm records of Diseworth back home, but I decided to check the original parish records anyway.

I’d been working my way through a stack of brittle, rough-edged parchment dating to the early 1700s when I made a breakthrough I’ll never forget. Overcome with emotion, I lowered my head to the table and wept.

My sobs drew my companions to my side. I was speechless, but as they looked over my shoulder, I showed them my discovery. Smoothing out a crease in the parchment, I exposed an entry that had escaped detection by the microfilm camera: “Robert, son of William and Mary Mugleston, baptized 11 February 1714.”

With a quick, almost inadvertent motion of my hand, I had brought to light what had eluded generations of genealogists.

In a little cemetery near an old church in Breedon-on-the-Hill, we found a double headstone marking where Robert Mugleston and his wife had been buried over two centuries ago. I hope their wait hasn’t seemed as long to them as did the relatively short time it took for us to get home with the information, submit the names, and learn of the completion of their temple work.

(Illustrated by Doug Fryer