Because Jim Sanders posted his mystery on several boards, I am summarizing here the report I gave on the Connecticut Genealogy Forum. The two main barriers to finding Mary Fraher in 1880 were the given birthdate and the pronunciation of the surname--classic census problems. I was able to recalculate the birthdate from obituary data Jim added on the other site, coming up with about 1865. I was able to get a short list of Marys in 1880 New Britain which included a 17-year-old Mary "Fryher." That was one vowel I had not tried with the asterisk! Subsequently, I found the family in 1870 as "Friher;" and Mary's siblings in 1900 included "Fryher" and "Friar," along with a transcriber's contribution of "Fryler." It was another reminder that we should not assume that the family was missed by the census enumerators. And it was another reminder of how hard we have to listen for the ancestral pronunciation of the family name.