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It's a very interesting point that you raise. Obviously, you can't 100% rely on any information that is provided by people. After all, we're all fallible. Personally, I have found that the least reliable information is contained in Irish death certificates. Especially when you're talking about the beginning of the 20th century, when, according to what I can understand from older people, most children didn't know much about their parents i.e. date of birth, date of marriage (if the parents were even married!) or sometimes who their parents' parents were and where they came from. Some people couldn't tell you much about their fathers as many men had to travel the country to make money for the family. But, having said that, the information that we can gather from bmds can be useful to an extent and sometimes very interesting!

hey! don't be so down on scientists. either you're not giving yourself enough credit in the imagination department or it's something other than being a scientist by trade. my sister is a scientist by trade and is unbelievably artistic and i'm a scientist by training and love being creative. i'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you're not giving yourself enough credit with your imagination (or maybe you're just not good with visualization but might be very good in other areas.) anyway, just needed to put my two cents in. i promise to get onto rescanning the photo and posting it soon.

Sorry that I haven't got around to posting the results. I tried last weekend but I had some difficulty uploading the files onto this site. I need to rescan the finished product for posting here. However, let me tell you now how I got on: it was basically a success. Thank you all for your advice. I promise to get around to posting the scanned photo. Really.

I would like to wish everyone who posted or read any of this GOOD LUCK! My close family are the types who are just don't want to know.  They are all afraid of what I might dig up and that our more distant relations will be problematic people. For a while I kept to myself just in case my family were right. However, when my paternal grandmother died and my uncle denied any knowledge of her photo albums, I was like a dog with a bone. I had spent many an hour with my grandmother looking through her albums when she was alive and she had been kind enough to part with some photos so that I might have something to know my ancestors by.  When I had a chance, I got my father to go through my grandmother's things that were left to gather dust and disintegrate in damp plastic bags.  I found some fascinating papers (especially my grandmother's uncle's last will and testiment).  It was through this will that I was able to find out more about my paternal grandmother's mother's family. Since then I have been able to make contact with a third cousin once removed that neither I nor my father knew about. It is so gratifying because it turns out that it was my family who were the weird ones all along! One lesson I've learned from this experience is don't be shy. Sharing information and going out on that limb to make contact with people you don't know (yet) can end up being very rewarding.  HAPPY ANCESTOR (AND FAMILY) HUNTING TO YOU ALL!!!!

Cynthia