In message <[email protected][206.172.98.42]>, John and Margaret Moore <[email protected]> writes >Can anyone tell me when the English habit of referring to the eldest >daughter as Miss Smith and her younger sisters as Miss Frances Smith, >Miss Elizabeth Smith, etc. died out? I ask because I seem to have >found an early 20th -century example here in Canada. It died out for practical purposes by 1910/1914, when the large households of unmarried adult daughters were declining. But I recall a household of three unmarried sisters in their 70-80s in the 1940s, known as Miss Marsh, Miss Carrie and Miss Annie. Miss Marsh used to complain about it in a mild way - 'No one ever calls me Mary now except the girls'. -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society