I forgot to add that the gravestone for John R. Smith is apparently wrong with both the birth and death dates, which is shown as 1830-1902. His death record at the Grundy Co cthouse shows he died Sept 12, 1903, age 85 (or 86, cannot tell for sure if the numeral is a 5 or a 6 due to bad handwriting), 4 months, 5 days. Hence, it appears he was born May 7, 1818 (or 1817). His obituary, at least the one in the Morris, IL paper gave no real info. I emailed a huge library in Lancashire, but they could not spare the time to look for his obituary there. (He died while on a trip to the U.S. to visit his daughter Mary Ann Smith Clayton.) My cousin told me that he died the night before he was to have left to go back to England. She got this info from her mother, who was close to Mary Ann, as Mary Ann was her mother's grandmother and babysat a lot for my cousin's mother. My cousin also told me a neat story about Mary Ann. She was walking through a meadow with a pregnant friend back in Lancashire when the friend went into labor and Mary Ann helped to deliver the baby! Also, my cousin says that the family members back in England raised a gravestone for him there, even though he is buried in Morris, IL. (He is almost certainly buried next to his wife Miriam in Leedfield cemetery, Oldham, Lancashire.) My cousin told me that she has a photo of the Lancashire gravestone. I am waiting for her to call me back re: seeing some old family photos. Hopefully the stone in England will give a date of birth that we can compare to the IL death record.

Now, we probably do have a decent chance to take the Smith line back one more generation anyway, if we can find a baptismal record for John R. Smith, since we have an approx date of birth and city of birth(Ashton-Underlyne, per the 1871 census) and we know his father's name. Baptisms usually took place about a month after birth.