There's something about the birth of your first child that makes you think of the family in its largest sense. That was certainly the case when my elder daughter was born in 1969. My reaction was to ask my father what he knew about our family tree—and the answer was, not very much. I expanded the enquiry to include my uncles, and was rewarded with photocopies of two pages from a family Bible belonging to my great-great-grandmother, Mary Ann. On them she had recorded the births of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, the dates of her own birth and that of her husband, William Corser, and the details of their marriage in the city of Wolverhampton in 1857.

I had thought the rest would be easy, particularly since I also found a photo showing Mary Ann and William and their five children. However, after going to the General Register Office in London to obtain a copy of their marriage certificate, which showed that William's father was called John and was a carpenter, things went no further. William's birth date was in 1832, before the start of civil registration in Britain. This, coupled with the fact that I didn't know William's birthplace, meant that I didn't know where to go next.

I started to search telephone and professional directories to find addresses of other Corsers—it was such an unusual surname that I felt sure we must all be related. After several months I had received very helpful responses which enabled me to plot eight family trees, most of which went back to the mid-1700s, and none of which had any connection to my family. After a couple of years I had gotten no further. My interests turned to other things and the family tree folder was put aside.

Twenty-odd years later, at Christmastime 1994, I bought myself a computer, and my daughter-the same daughter whose birth had sparked my genealogical quest-gave me a family tree program to run on it. We sat down together and filled in what we knew. That left quite a few empty spaces, which brought home how much information we lacked. My interest was fired up again, but could I do any better this time?

I started by looking at reference books in the local library-the "how-to-trace-your-family-tree" sorts of books. One of them mentioned the International Genealogical Index(tm) (IGI),¹ which seemed to be the answer to my problem. At first I wrote for copies of entries in the IGI. I knew that the marriage certificate referred to Wolverhampton, so I obtained all entries for Corser in the counties of Shropshire and Staffordshire. Once I had these, I looked for Johns and Williams with dates which might possibly match my ancestors-and came up with nothing. This was very frustrating, particularly as I had performed a similar exercise for my wife's family and found entries for several generations of the Baigents in one small town in Surrey.

I bought a copy of the McLaughlin guide² "Making the Most of the IGI," which showed the uses and drawbacks of the IGI, but it didn't solve my problem. I used the services of a researcher to obtain a copy of the marriage certificate of William's son, my great-grandfather, also named William, and the birth certificate of his first child, a daughter called Lilian. These turned up addresses in the cities of Stoke-on-Trent and Derby, but didn't seem to get me much further.

Then one of my uncles sent me a snippet of information. He had been in touch with his cousin Constance, daughter of Lilian (my grandfather's elder sister, who married into the Bayley family). I was willing to follow any lead, so I wrote to her asking if she could help. The reply was something of a bombshell. I knew from Mary Ann's Bible that Constance had had five brothers, but, as my father and uncle had never mentioned them, I assumed they were all dead. Not so: all the brothers were still alive and well, and the eldest, Haden Corser Bayley, was living in the Lincolnshire town of Woodhall Spa. This was an eye-opener, as I had lived there myself for nine years in the 1970s. I contacted Haden and met him a couple of weeks later. Yes, he had been living in Woodhall Spa at the same time as I, and neither of us had known of the other!

Haden showed me an album of family photos he had taken in the late 1920s. Best of all, he had known my great-grandfather William, having lived with him in the town of Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire during the first World War. He was able to tell me about his physical appearance and his work, and suddenly the remote image in the photo became a flesh-and-blood person to me. Haden also told me that his youngest brother, Richard Corser Bayley, was still living in the old Bayley home in Newcastle. What really grabbed my attention was the news that Richard had a box of family papers, photographs, and newspaper cuttings which might be of help to me.

An expedition to Staffordshire was obviously in order. In addition to arranging a meeting with Richard, I made an appointment to go to the Staffordshire record office to search the census records once I had more information. Richard proved to be the breakthrough I needed. He showed me a rosewood box with Mary Ann's name engraved on a silver plate on the lid. In the box were some newspaper cuttings relating to my great-grandfather William, black-edged notes announcing the deaths of my great-great-grandfather William and his wife, Mary Ann, and an album of photos of the younger William and his family, including family group portraits taken at the time of his funeral in March 1918. These photos were real treasures, and had never been seen by my father and his brothers.

The most important news Richard had, however, was that the elder William and Mary Ann had lived at the address in Stoke which I had disregarded when I saw it on the younger William's marriage certificate! Armed with that piece of information, I went the next day to the Staffordshire record office. After a friendly welcome and some instruction on using the microfilm reader, I was let loose amongst the records. I went straight to the 1881 records for Stoke, looking for Mayo Street. I quickly found it and located William and Mary Ann and their two sons, Joseph and William. Finding the birthplace entries, I saw that the elder William had been born in Essington, while the younger was born in Chester.

Essington turned out to be a tiny hamlet in the parish of Bushbury, a few miles north of Wolverhampton (which explained why William and Mary Ann were married there). The elder William had been born in 1832, so I went to the 1841 census. Scrolling through the microfilm with mounting anticipation, I found an entry for John Cawser, wheelwright, and listed among his family was a William of the right age. I just managed to stop myself from shattering the hush in the room with a resounding "gotcha!"

Following the family through the succeeding census returns, I found that they were listed as Causer in 1851 and Corser in 1861; John's place of birth was given as Bushbury, and his birth year as ca. 1789. William had trained as a wheelwright-he was shown as a carpenter on his marriage certificate and as a coach-maker on that of his son, William.

Once I was back at home it was time to go through the IGI again, this time looking for all the Causers in Shropshire and Staffordshire. The first thing I noticed was that there were more entries of this spelling in Staffordshire than Corsers. There was a John Causer born in Bushbury in 1789, with a father called John and a mother called Diana. Next I looked for the marriage-and there was John Causer and Diana Jennings in Bushbury. A search for children of those parents turned up one Cawser, two Causers, and, in the original lists, four Corsers! Next I looked for the birth of John in Bushbury; there was one, born to a William and Margaret. A further search turned up children to those parents, all Causer, and a marriage between William Causer and Margaret Sanson. I finally located a suitable William, born in 1728 to Thomas Causer in Bushbury.

Now it was time to review what I had found. The family, with the variant spelling Causer, appears in the records in the parish of Bushbury, ca. 1700. By the mid-1800s, John, a wheelwright, was living in Essington with his wife and six children. His son William, born in 1832, married Mary Ann Williams in Wolverhampton on 28 December 1857, and they had three sons, John, Joseph, and William, although John appears to have died in infancy. The younger William trained as a wheelwright and went to live in the city of Chester, where the 1861 census shows him working as a carpenter for a railway company. By 1881 the family was living in Stoke-on-Trent, where William was working as a wagon builder for the North Staffordshire Railway. His sons both became coach builders for the NSR; Joseph appears to have died young, but son William went on to become the foreman of the Carriage and Wagon Works in Stoke. He married Elizabeth Wibberley on 11 July 1885, and they had five children. The youngest son, William Francis, was my grandfather.

As well as being foreman of the works, my great-grandfather William was very active in trades unionism and politics. He was president of the United Kingdom Society of Coachmakers and president of the North Staffordshire Workingmen's Unionist Federation, and served on other Conservative bodies. His eldest son, Joe, emigrated to Australia and achieved distinction in the motor industry there. The middle son, Haden, became deputy general secretary of the National Association of Local Government Officers. During the first World War, the three sons joined the armed forces, together with Lilian's husband, Albert Bayley, and other male relatives. My grandfather was an airship coxswain in the Royal Naval Air Service and stayed on in the Royal Air Force after the war, founding a family tradition of Air Force service.

Of course, the job of tracing my family history isn't finished-there is plenty to explore. I want to look at the originals of the Bushbury parish records, to verify what I have deduced from the IGI and to see if I can extend the family tree further back. The family links with the railway-my grandfather married the daughter of another North Staffordshire railwayman-will make an interesting subject for research. I have found a useful guide called "Was Your Grandfather a Railwayman?" which lists the whereabouts of British Railway Company staff records. There is also much enjoyment to be had in tracing the side branches of the tree. Joe founded a large dynasty in Australia, which I am trying to unravel, and there are other "lost" members to track down. In addition to the Bayleys, my continuing habit of looking for Corsers in telephone directories has turned up another cousin of my father's, living not twenty miles from my present home. My grandfather's service career will also be a fascinating line of inquiry to follow.

My recent success in tracing my family tree, when I fared so poorly twenty-five years ago, is due partly to the sources now available. The British census records for 1881 and 1891 are now open, and the IGI has made it possible to make a wide-ranging search of parish records quickly and easily. The services of researchers who advertise in family history magazines make it possible to obtain birth and marriage certificates and census records without going to the record offices, and to locate newspaper reports and investigate other local sources from a distance.

And the title of this tale? I came across a Corser coat of arms, with a motto in Latin: "Rectu Coursa." The title is a translation of this motto-a fitting one, too, as I have at last been put on the right course to trace my family tree.

Bill Corser is a writer and researcher of genealogy and arcane aspects of military history. He has a B.A. in history from the Open Universtiy and is the author of two books.