Michelle, I see you've been doing the rounds of the Rootsweb message boards and mailing lists. I think the problem is that you are not putting in known facts that relate to England. You keep telling stories about what happened when he got to South Africa. While these are very interesting, they don't help locate his UK roots. You have his wife, but you don't list out date and place of marriage. If he left UK in 1899, he would be 26, so presumably was married before he left. Try searching for a marriage on http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl That should give you a location. The most obvious places to look are 1881 and 1891 census. 1881 has 37 possibilities, but none with exact spelling. You can probably rule out William J, William H, etc. There is only one in Bedford, but you are not sure of his birthplace. You can check 1891 for yourself on FindMyPast. Remember to allow surname variants. Most come up as Hooton. Check also FreeBMD for births of William. But none come up as Hoaten or Hooten. Peter