Robert, you are not the only one to have that problem.  All my ancestors were old when they had their children.  Most of those who were still alive when I was born knew nothing or said they did not know.  The ones who did know things and were still alive when I was born, died when I was still too young to know how to ask questions.  I am thinking right now of such a couple.  I asked them about my mother's father when I was a child.  Later I asked my mother who they were.  She did not know.  I asked her brother who the woman was.  He said he thought she was their mother's first cousin.  She was and had been raised by my 2g grandmother and could have told me soooo many things, things that cannot be found anywhere else now.   This grandmother had two families and I traced a descendent of the second family hoping that he might know something.  He wanted nothing to do with family history.  Another dead end.   My father took us to visit some people.  One I long later learned was my grandfather's sister.  I was even younger than the case above.  She was long dead when I realized who she was.  She was born in Ireland.   So sad for those of us like that.   Alanna --- On Sun, 3/6/11, Robert SLATER <[email protected]> wrote: I have so far not discovered any family record of her date of birth, and there are only vague family stories that "She was  Catholic", and that "She may have been an orphan, with the family wiped out by the potato famine". Everyone here who actually knew her has now died, and there are few written records, although I have found a couple of photographs. Robert SLATER South Australia