My guest would be my great grandmother Frances. Family lore has it that she was not a sweet person, but rather demanding to put it nicely. Her life would make a good outline for a novel and I have lots of questions to ask her. She was born Frances Core in Bradford in 1860 - to Wm Core and Nanny/Ann Holdsworth Core. In 1878 she married James Sunderland at St. Wilfred's in Calverly. James died in the fall of 1888 leaving Frances with 5 surviving children, including one twin girl, the sister having died young. The following year Frances packed up the children and sailed for Canada, probably in the summer, seemingly to join her sister, Margaret Ann Core Pownall, in Ottawa. In September of 1889 in Ottawa, ON, she married one Harry Raistrick - also born in Bradford, about 1865. That's the first and last thing I could ever find out about Harry in Canada. I believe he was the last of his particular family line in Yorkshire. In January of 1890 Frances gave birth to a daughter Serena, known in the family as Irene. On Irene's birth certificate James Sunderland is listed as her father. That would be impossible, but there's nothing to indicate for sure that it was the mysterious Harry Raistrick either. A few years later Frances was with Alfred Burwell Crawford, still in Ottawa, where she gave birth in 1897 to another set of twins, George and Alfred. Baby Alfred died of bronchitis the following year. No registration of a marriage to Alfred Crawford Sr. has yet turned up. Neither has any trace been found of Mr. Raistrick - no death, no divorce, no emigration ... despite attempts using every possible spelling of his name in church and cemetery records, and on Ancestry. A recent visit with a descendant of her youngest son George, turned up the story that Frances left England pregnant with the child of an unknown father. Harry Raistrick was from Bradford and has emerged as the likely father but ... I'm still searching digital images of all ships from England to Canada in 1889 hoping to turn up both Frances and Harry on the same ship - which still doesn't prove anything. So, the mystery remains and will intrigue me, possibly forever, unless a brick falls out of this particular wall. Merry Christmas to all listers. Ann Burns Ottawa, ON Canada