Chuck, Your history sounds very much like mine.....My great grandmother was "an orphan" from birth, as the family story goes. Her mother, name unknown and origin unknown, gave birth to her first baby, dying in childbirth. Her father was a miner who died six months prior to her birth, his name also unknown; he was german. My Greatgrandmother was raised by a greataunt. She also always said she was from Colorado. There were no known relatives as she preferred to never talk about her life. Now this story ran in the family for decades. In fact I am finding the real family story now, about 120 years after my greatgrandmother was born. I first wrote down all that was family legend. It became a sort of hobby asking everyone what grandma's story was. Next, I chased the supposed last name of the "greataunt" that raised my greatgrandma. This was the first in the series of "miracles" that happened. I chased the name by looking up everything I could on Ancestry.com that was related to the woman's last name. The paydirt was when I sent for the ONLY social security death Index name that I could find. It was from the right approximate area for the family so I figured I had nothing to lose but $7.00. I received it back and there were two names, the mom and dad of this man, and no other information because it was a different kind of document(but all that Social Security could find). I looked both of those names up on Ancestry and came up with another great lead. The man was listed in a city directory in Colorado in the 1880's and his occupation at the time was MINING! The woman's name I had never heard of before and the family told me to forget her because it was a "bogus" name since they had never heard of it either. They told me she was probably another wife IF the man was truly family. WRONG MOVE! I didn't listen to them fortunately. I continued to forage through the information that I had received from family and at the same time kept chasing the two names that came up on that wierd record from SS. I wrote to Leadville, CO and recieved the marriage certificate for the "two" that had shown up on the SS form. Hmmm. At least I knew that they were married. Still it was a long shot chasing names that the family thought mythical. I might add that there were hundreds of women with the name Anna Harrington in the US at the time period I was researching, however I kept the names that were of the general area around Leadville, Colorado. This began the great chase for the other last name. I then started looking up in the Census for 1880 all the Harringtons in Leadville. I found two families but each one had an Anna Harrington......Hmmmmm. I did find that there was only one that had a child named Anna and the other was the wife of a different man. THis made that woman maybe too old and possibly "unavailable" since the date on that marriage cert that I had was dated 1882. I still didn't know how old this woman that I was chasing was. THe story goes on in many unusual ways and I have managed to chase and FIND the whole family back to Ireland, however, the greataunt that raised my ggrandma was her aunt, the sister of her mother! The last name was correct on both accounts in that SS record. And the family was a mining family but we now believe that the father of my ggradma was not killed before grandma was born. He actually lived in the same town working at the same mine as the aunt's husband, a place where her grandfather had worked too. THe whole of my story is: 1. Don't totally discount family legend. Do the research on even the smallest clue. 2. Bogus names or places may pan out so don't discount them either. 3. Do listen to family thoughts on your search as they may send you to areas that you wouldn't look otherwise. The family may also have their memories jogged and remember details of information that may be helpful (like family professions, or memories of "mining" that grandma talked about that was unrelated namewise but leads you to know details like what kind of mining the family once did). That can lead you to the correct areas of country as well as to the correct interest groups. 4. If you have a "hunch" follow it. Keep in mind that it is only a "theory" but follow it and think logically. Logically means looking at the historical information of the time period, the economics of the time and the culture that your ancestors belonged to. My best places to keep up with those logical facts were on LISTS off of RootsWeb for States, Counties, and groups like miners, Irish, germans etc (which is what you appear to be doing!). I could go on with my story, and I apologize for it's length, but I'm sure you may have more story than you bargained for or wanted. Good luck to you in your search. Dianna Wickern