2023 provided me with a breakthrough on my GGrandfather.
Having previously spent time trying to solve his riddle without success - "no trace" of him before his sign-up papers for the army in 1898. Despite having his DoB in the 1939 Register, no BC or baptism could be found. The army papers gave a tantallising clue - a mother as NoK, but the name and address proved to be a dead end. Then during 2023 some more army records came online. Fortunately, during his time spent in South Africa during the Boer War, he was loaned to another unit, he completed another sign-up record. This also gave a NoK mother, but this time, although the first names matched previous, it had a totally different surname, one I had not come across before. So on a punt, I looked at the indexes to see if there happened to be a birth of his first name but with this new surname for the DoB I had (which tied up with inferred ages on other records). Sure enough there was one, and in the right area too. So biting the bullet, I ordered the cert. When it came back, it had an exact match for the DoB. The ACTUAL father's (first) name matched what had been provided by my GGF, but obvs with this new surname. It appears that my GGF was born shortly before the parents were married and, after five more children, they lived apart for the rest of their lives (my GGGM remarrying shortly after my GGGF died). Quite where the surname my GGF lived by all his life came from, who knows. Maybe he was actually fathered by a different man to that listed on his BC/Bapt, probably only a DNA test will prove. But it certainly threw open an entirely new branch for researching.
Hopefully, 2024 will do the same for my last remaining GGF wall.
