Any advice greatly appreciated. Thank you. My "impossible-to-pin downs" are great-great grandparents, John and Catherine (Clark) "McMen," born respectively in Ireland and (perhaps) Massachusetts. Nothing is known of their extended families. Between them and their children, there are nine different spellings of the McM... surname, which eventually stabilized as McMane when their descendants lived in Summit. Pre-1850 (apparently as early as 1839) it is reported that they resided in New York City. No family in the 1840 census of New York fits the profile or even comes close to doing so. From 1850 to 1872, John and/or Catherine lived variously in Madison (Morris County), Springfield (Essex County -- apparently at the site of what later was Summit in Union) and Millburn (in Essex County.) John apparently died before 1860, but no record of his death can be found in local registers or in the state archives. Cemetery searches also were unsuccessful. There is some evidence in federal records pertaining to her son's Civil War service that Catherine may have been living as late as 1883, although the federal census of Morris-Essex-Union 1880 does not show her. The only church record located, of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Millburn, shows her and two children having joined the church in 1868, but she does not appear on the list of communicants, so may not have remained a member. The last record of her is 1872 and seems to place her in Millburn, where she also was in 1870. No death record can be found and cemetery searches have proved unsuccessful. Baffled in Paris -- Dave McMane