My main interest was finding out more about my ancestor who fought for the English during the American Revolutionary War. After the war ended, his unit spent several years in Canada. The story was that his surname was MacGill and he got into an altercation with an English officer who had insulted MacGill's lady. The officer fell after being struck, hit his head on a rock which resulted in his death. MacGill deserted promptly and came to America where he settled in upstate NY. He was said to have dropped the Mac portion of his surname at that point.
I happened to be telling this story to a sales manager in Orillia at lunch, who said that he knew a woman there whose maiden name was Gill. Later, he started to tell her my story, and she fininshed it for him. A couple of weeks later, she sent me information on my ancestor, his son, my gg grandfather, as well as the names of his 9 sons and 6 daughters, their birth years and marriage years and names of each spouse.
Some time later, I learned that a Gill cousin went to Kew, England and looked up the military record of my ancestor and ggg grandfather. The man enlisted as Gill and remained Gill, so he was never MacGill in the first place. Daniel Gill was born in England in 1756 or 1757 and is buried at Stony Creek, New York.
