In May 2024, my wife Joy and I travelled to England to search for and meet our ancestors, both living and deceased.

My great-great grandparents on my mother’s side, Lucy Clayton and Thomas Bullock, were early converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Preston area of Manchester, England. In May 2024 we travelled to England. I wanted to visit the locations of their early lives, where they heard the Gospel and joined the Church.

The night we arrived near Preston I prayed that I would have experiences the following day where I could come to know these great ancestors and feel their lives. The next day my prayer was abundantly answered!

The first missionaries sent abroad by the Church arrived in Liverpool on July 19, 1837. Seven missionaries were sent, including two members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles – Elder Heber C. Kimball, and Elder Orson Hyde.

The missionaries baptized over 1,500 new members. My great great-grandmother Lucy Clayton was baptized in October 1837 in the River Ribble.

Three years later, in 1840, seven of the Twelve Apostles returned to the area and my great great-grandfather Thomas Bullock was baptized in the Brierly Hill Branch on November 20, 1841.

We arrived at our hotel near Preston late in the evening after dark. We sat in the dining room and heard the sound of water flowing. We went to the window and looked outside and saw a wide river. We asked the waitress the name of the river; she hesitated for a moment and said that’s the River Ribble. That’s the spot we had come to see. The next morning, we headed into Preston.

Before leaving for England, I had read about the early missionaries in Preston in a book written by our neighbor Ron Esplin, Men with a Mission.

The book had an 1840 map of the Preston area showing the River Ribble flowing along Avenham Park on the north side of the river. It showed three bridges. The eastmost bridge was marked as the approximate site of first of the first missionary baptisms in England in 1837.

When we arrived in Preston my phone map showed the same park with the same bridges.

The early missionaries estimated that between 5,000 and 9,000 people lined the shore of the River Ribble at Avenham Park waiting to see the baptisms because they had never seen baptisms by immersion before; the Church of England baptizes by sprinkling.

We parked at the east side of the park where we were greeted by a couple who were just getting in their van. They asked why we had come to Avenham Park. We told them we were there in search of our ancestors and specifically to find the area where they were baptized in the River Ribble. They immediately said they knew the spot and gave us directions to the footbridge. We had never met this couple before, and they were not members of the Church but seemed to know the story and the location.

Following their directions we were soon at the footbridge. It is no longer in use because of safety concerns. The book also told of the monument to these early baptisms and even though we believed we were at the baptismal site we searched around and could not find the monument in this area.

We walked further along the path and were met by an older man sitting on a bench, who asked why we were there. We answered that we were in England looking for the path of our ancestors who had been baptized in this river in the 1800s. The man said that we would find a monument to the event in the Japanese gardens in the park and pointed the direction. Once again, the man was not a member of the Church, and we had never met him before, but he seemed to be placed there awaiting our questions. We headed up the hill to the Japanese garden where we found the monument.

When I left the Japanese garden, another man stopped me and said he noticed I was looking at the monument to the baptisms, but I had not looked at a second, newer monument a few feet from it and pointed it out to me. This was another stranger who seemed to be there just to guide me along my journey of finding the baptism location of my great great-grandparents.

As we strolled down the promenade back towards the parking area we passed an older couple, the lady with a walker and the man walking with a cane. The man asked Joy why she was wearing a camera around her neck, and we gave the usual answer that we were there looking for the path of our ancestors. The man said he knew where our ancestors were baptized. “I saw the event myself.” And he took us to the side of the promenade to the footbridge again.

The man described how the early missionaries had stood in the water with the people being baptized, and raised their hand saying, “In the name of God, and Jesus, and the Holy Spirit” and then he said, “Can you believe they then immersed the people under the water?”

I asked the man how he knew so much about it, and he said he had seen the event himself. I pointed out that this almost two hundred years ago, and the man was only in his eighties. And then he chuckled and said, “Yes, I know, but about 40 years ago your church made a movie here to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the baptisms and I watched them film it at this location.”

The Lord had heard my prayer and sent people to guide us along our search path for my ancestors.

– Steven Gough, consultant, Granite FamilySearch Center