Hi Ken, I know what you mean about the educated guess, it is a really conundrum. If you have five candidates that might be the mother, you can use marriage records and the census to maybe eliminate a few. 1) The birth certificate will give an address for the birth, which is likely to be the home and can be cross referenced with the nearest census before and after. 2) Look for marriages of the candidate before the birth, which would change the mother's surname and eliminate them, and look for confirmation in the next census under the married names. 3) Look for marriages for the candidates after the birth and then look in the next census under the married name to see if the mother and the illegitimate child appear. One tip here is that, if the child from they man she eventually married, the child will often convert to the new husband's name, but if not the child will retain the mother's maiden name, even though living with mother and new husband. I've used technique 3 in tracing my family and successfully linked a woman in through the son who retained the maiden name. Be careful though, as I think the name change is just informal, not a hard rule. Good luck, Pete Hulme -----Original Message----- I must have five likely candidates who could be the mother and without a birthdate or something factual to help identify her it becomes an educated guess, a genealogist nightmare. Ken