Our son got engaged a while back, and married this past May.  I wanted to do something nice for our new daughter-in-law, and, since I've developed a bit of skill in genealogy research, I decided to do her genealogy for her as a gift. She appreciated the idea and told me her mother's genealogy had all been done, but she didn't know much about her dad's side of the family. She said her great grandmother's name was Clara McGrath, she married Raymond Brown and Clara had siblings and gave me some of their names It was a breeze for me to find Clara in 1930, 1920, 1910 and 1900 (Clara was born in Ill in Cook County IL 1898.) And so it was also easy to track Clara's parents back; father Thomas was born Feb 1863 in Illinois and his parents were born in Ireland. Using every Boolian trick I knew of, I was able to find only one Thomas Mcgrath who fit the description.  in 1870 he was with his parents, Patrick and Rosina, in Freeport Ill.  And living with them is Thomas' brother, James and Patrick's (single) sister-in-law, Julia Shields, so we even know Rosina's maiden name. I struggled for weeks trying to extend the family backwards in time and to find any more info on Patrick and Rosina and to see if I could find when either or both of them immigrated from Ireland.  I was at a roadlock.  I failed every search. I have a genealogist friend back in Freeport who was kind enough to say yes to my request for help.  She went down to the Freeport library and took less than an hour to find the obituaries for Patrick and Rosina, and it was clear that this was not the family I was seeking.  MY Thomas Mcgrath was lin Chicago in 1900 and THAT Thomas was a newspaperman in Rockford in 1905 when his parents died. I went back to ancestry and tried some more sorting tricks and found one more Thomas McGrath with a brother James living just blocks away in Cook County from the two sisters they eventually married.  Should I be amazed that their father was named James, too? So in 1900 we had 2 Patrick Mcgraths, both born in Ireland, each married to women born in Ireland and with sons James of the same age and with sons Thomas of the same age, all 4 children being born in ILL. I want to call that amazing, but i do remember about 10-15 years ago I read that two families had children born the same day in the same hospital.  both fathers' names were the same and both mother's given names were the same and the 2 babies were given the same names! Always something to keep us on our toes! Jerry D. Moore Oh my God!  That small town is where every branch of my father's side of the family came from since 1855!