AMA - I'm a professional Genealogist / Family Historian.

[FamilyTreeBuilder]

Just that. Have my own business helping people look into their ancestry, the history of their houses, help with DNA tests , ancestors who have emigrated etc.

South African research can be tricky. Some of the records have been digitised but not all. You may also have to look on province-specific sites and if you don't know whether they were in Cape Town or Durban it's hard.

whooops, posted before finishing..

www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/South_Africa_Genealogy

Is a good starting point for finding out what resources are available online. I would also suggest looking at passenger lists departing from the UK to see if you can find them as these often have family groups travelling together, or give a final intended destination. You might find them travelling back to the UK again after settling in S Africa.

The name changing thing/spelling is hard and it also depends how the database is structured, how it treat O' names. Some ignore the ' and others don't. Using wildcards is a good way around this. Putting in alley will return any Malleys OR Omalleys OR O'Malleys (or Palleys, Talleys etc). You can put in more wildcards - so mall*y if you've come across a record listing them as Malloy, or something.

On the other point about the child - to me the obvious assumption was that the child had either a physical or learning disability. It was VERY common for children to be institutionalised from a very young age and the parents encouraged to move on and forget about them. You don't say what period you are looking at, usually records of children;s homes or hospitals are classed as medical records and locked for 100 years, so if you are looking pre-1922 you may be unlucky. Before 1926 there was no adoption law and arrangements were made privately, or through a charity. Records were not always kept. It is entirely possible that a child who was born as Jane Smith went into an institution, and was "adopted" as a toddler by Mr and Mrs Brown, who decided they preferred the name Susan. Susan Brown grows up, marries, has kids and dies and has no idea that she was originally Jane Smith. Or does know, but would prefer that nobody else knew.

You could dig around into the relatives which she was initially with, see if anyone else pops up who could be her at an older age. Or if you can identify an institution, see if records exist. I would usually suggest DNA but if you suspect the child died young without having children of their own, that's not going to help.

Oh MN uses the asterisk for bold. What I meant was [asterisk]alley, if you see what i mean.

@FamilyTreeBuilder I've only just seen your replies. Thank you! I did have a superficial look at the Wiki and will examine it more closely when time allows. Passenger lists is also a good idea. There was quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing at various points as much of the English family were in the navy.

On the child specifically, I found a birth and baptism in 1890, and in the 1891 census the child was living with maternal grandparents in London whilst parents were boarding in Brighton. A couple of suggested records implied that the child could have been institutionalised somewhere in Kent. At the 1901 census the mother was in London and a few months later married my OH's Great-Grandfather in South Africa. I wish I knew how they met, or whether it was some kind of marriage of convenience. I suppose she must have divorced her first husband, the child's father, but can't find a record of that. I'm quite certain that none of this past was discussed within the family so we have to tread lightly when mentioning them. I wish I had more time to help, it's all very interesting and often quite sad to piece together the life stories from the records alone. Thanks for your insights.

Hi @tinselvestsparklepants , I hope you don't think this is creepy, but I was so intrigued by this one that I started to have a look (I'm not a genealogist, just a keen amateur). I haven't found a death cert I'm afraid, but unless I am barking up the wrong tree, her son looks to have been born and registered under her maiden name (which is itself her own mother's maiden name), and later that year she married a man who is not the same one she's living with in 1921. In 1939 her son appears to be living with his maternal grandmother and aunt, and using their surname. That's all I have so far, happy to share details if you like.

A white British background all related at some point? Irish people aren't British.

I recently did my dna and found an interesting unknown - on my paternal side is a small % of Irish ancestry.
I've looked at both sets of paternal grandparents and found nobody Irish, and taking each of those people 1 or 2 generations back in their family descendency, still nothing.
The info does seem correct as it showed a higher % of Scottish ancestry on my maternal side which I knew of, and have corroborated.
How far back might 4-7% genetically showing now be? (Worded that badly, but hopefully understandably).

50% from each parent
25% from each grandparent
12.5% from each g grandparent
6.25% from each gg grandparent

and so on. Except the percentages aren't exact because of recombination. Do my best guess would be 4% would be a great grandparent.

But if you already know that you have a lot of Scottish roots this could explain things too. On Ancestry their circle for "scotland" takes in 70% of N Ireland, Northumbria, a chunk of Cumbria and the Isle of Man. People from these areas have similar DNA which is hardly suprising given that you can stand on the Antrim coast and clearly see across to Scotland. Also, lots of Irish people moved to the west of Scotland in the 1850s/60s and married and had children with other Irish people so the "Irish DNA" persisted.

I really wouldn't get het up on the Ancestry estimates as they are notoriously unreliable. You may have an Irish gg grandparent. You might not - they may be from Galloway or Ayrshire.

Sorry - 4% would be a great great grandparent.

Thanks, OP. As far as my research shows, none of my gt gt grandparents were from Ireland. The Scottish ones are from a small village with potential links to Edinburgh and Dunfermline.
I have one ancestor, further back, on the side of the family showing the Irish dna, who has what seems to be a Scottish name, but of whom I can find no trace in English or Scottish records. He'd be more like gtx4 grandparent.
Back to the research for me! 😀