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« on: Thursday 27 April 23 06:12 BST (UK) »
I had extraordinary difficulty finding anything about my maternal grandmother's family until I found they changed their name from "Thiel" to "Shiel" to disguise her father's German origins before WW1.
Equally difficult was finding my maternal grandfather's birth. The whole family were in Dundee in 1891 and 1901 but the census said he was born in the Transvaal. Presumably the whole family went out there, he was born before they scurried back during the Boer War. The only way of getting a precise birth date was from his army records.