War Heroes

Every family has War Heroes.  Every family, in every nation, everywhere.

I don't think there are any exceptions.  If you don't think you have, it's because you haven't found them yet.

War Hero In My Family is a new programme on Channel 5 here in the UK.  It is on Tuesday nights at 8pm.  I haven't seen last nights episode, so this is not a review, but it seems like a good idea.  The focus is on the Second World War.

Not a video to watch, but a good soundtrack for this blog, by the excellent John Tams.

If you are looking at discovering the War Heroes in your family, from almost any time period, the internet can be of use.  Ancestry, in the UK and on its Worldwide sites, has many records relating to military service.  An example of what the UK site has to offer:

• First World War Service and Pension Records - these are incomplete, sadly, due to bombing during the Second World War.
• Battle of Waterloo Medal Roll - lists those who fought in the 100 day campaign.
• Army Roll of Honour - First & Second World War casualties.

Find My Past has even more on offer:

• British Army service records 1760-1915 - this is a truly massive resource.
• Napoleonic War records.
• Regimental records for Manchester City, Paddington Rifles, Royal Fusiliers, Royal Artillery.
• Royal Marine medal roll, 1914-1920.
• Royal Naval Division records, 1914-1919.
• Military Nurses, 1856-1940. - Not all heroes are male!

This is just a snippet of what is available.  Ancestry and Find My Past cost money, either a subscription or pay-per-view.  There are some free websites:

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission
This is a free site you can search for anyone who died in active service and receive details of their place of burial or remembrance. There are normally extra details, such as regiment or ship served on, rank and next of kin.

The Soldier in Later Medieval England
If you are looking further back in time, this database covers the 14th & 15th centuries.

Canadian Great War Project
Excellent resource for those with Canadian ancestry - as the title suggests this relates to the First World War.

National Archives of Australia
You can order hard copies of documents, but many are already scanned in online.  Second World War service records are on this site, free to view.

And if you can't find what you need, try google.  There's a whole host of websites dedicated to specific regiments, ships, wars and battles.  Get in touch with people and ask for help.

As an idea of what you may find, here are a few War Heroes from my own family:

Laurie Arthur Mealing - pre-war soldier who served at Gallipoli and in France with the Border Regiment. Died on the 1st July, 1916, at the Battle of the Somme.

Gabriel Finch - served with the Royal Artillery through Portugal and Spain with Wellington, chasing Napoleon back to France.  Survived and died at home in Kent at the grand age of 84 in 1855.

Orlando James Lloyd - pre-war soldier who served with the Suffolk regiment in France.  Died at the infamous, and crucial, Battle of La Cateau on 26 August 1914. 

Sidney John Douglas Thompson - signed up for the Royal Navy as a boy in 1933 and travelled the world.  Spent the war on HMS Kent - torpedoed in the Mediterranean near Libya.  The Kent was then transferred to Arctic Convoy duty for two years, arguably one of the harshest environments of the war. 

Prince Frederick Finch - yes, his name really was Prince, although he preferred Fred.  Served in the Rifle Brigade in the Crimea.

I could go on all day listing names, but giving such brief mentions to them seems wrong.  The point to take from this is you will find heroes.  And they won't all be perfect - you'll read about them, warts and all, in their service records.  The thing that unites them all is that they were there at the events that shaped our nation, for better or worse.  They were witnesses to things many of us cannot possibly imagine.

And once you find those heroes you will find you remember them often, sometimes unexpectedly.  I spoke to one fellow researcher who thought of his great-grandfather everyday, despite never knowing him.  He drew such inspiration from him.

Newspaper Archive

The British Library, in partnership with BrightSolid, are scanning in and computer-fying 40 million newspaper pages aver the next ten years.  At present, there are just under 4 million pages online, but they are adding 8,000 new pages everyday.

British Newspaper Archive

As you would expect a resource like this costs money to subscribe to: an eyewatering £79 a year.  Or £6.95 for a 48 hour pass.

However, searching is free and gives you brief excerpt of the articles found.  With this in mind, it is well worth doing a few searches and finding if there are any interesting articles relating to you family before you pay for anything.

I did this and made a list of what took my fancy, and once I had built up a substantial research schedule I took the plunge and paid for 48 hours.

The site is fantastic, a vast treasure trove of stories you would never discover any other way.  The images are crisp, and you can save them to your computer for later use.

Considering they are less than 10% of the way into the project, I found a remarkable amount.  Examples of what I discovered include a description of a fire that damaged my ancestor William Canning's shop, along with the discovery that the shop was called The South Western Laboratory, an article about my gt-gt grandmother's brother who drowned, several articles relating to crimes - family either being stolen from or doing the stealing.

Generally news means 'bad news' (crimes, tragedies, etc) although there are some good points.  One ancestor took part in a London boat race and there are mentions of marriages, reviews of theatrical performances and the like.  One thing that does stand out is the high quality of local newspaper journalism compared to today.

Local newspapers are a shadow of what they once were.  Bad spelling and inaccurate, lazy reporting are now commonplace.  But I digress.

The one downside is the search, as it uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition).   This means the a computer 'reads' the page and decides what it says, rather than humans transcribing each page. 

A benefit of this is that as soon as a page is scanned it is searchable.  A negative is that OCR can be a little inaccurate. 

If you know something news-worthy happened and the appropriate newspaper is available but you are getting no results it may be worth searching just that date but different words relating to the event.

For example, you know that John Anon was murdered in Alphatown, and the Alphatown Gazette is available for that time but your search for John Anon brings up nothing.  Try using the advanced search to narrow things down.  Search in a specific month of a year, in just that paper for murder.  Chances are you'll find something.  It is worth thinking outside the box.

Also, I found a successful way of search was using the AND tool.  AND allows you to find articles which contain two, or more, separate words.

Example:  Searching for Jones Chelmsford will give results that contain the words Jones or Chelmsford, as well as those that contain both.

However, if you search for Jones AND Chelmsford you should get articles that contain the two words together.

Also using quotes allows more specific searches.  "Arthur Jones" will give results pertaining to Arthur Jones.

This is a growing resource and invaluable to genealogists.  Anyone using the site that needs help or advice can aways ask here.

Getting Started

Right.  You have decided to find out about your forebears.  The very first thing to do is grab a piece of paper and write down everything you know.  All very technical and you may even think pointless, but this is essential. 

Start with yourself.  All the whens, wheres and who withs.  And all very easy so far.  Next you get down your own parents.  And all their whens, wheres and who withs.

Go on with this with each person until you run out of what you know.  Draw it up into a family tree and see how it looks.

You may find you can go quite far back, in which case you were lucky enough to have parents or grandparents who told you stories and were wise enough to listen to them.

I understand that not everyone slots into this group.  I certainly don’t.

The next stage is to go to your relatives and see what they know.  And write all this down.  Make notes even if they’re not 100% sure of the exact details.  Jot down family legends and stories.

I will put in a warning here.  Many is the time that I, and many other researchers, have searched for an Uncle Don or an Aunt Polly and found nothing.  Be aware that family may know people by an entirely different name to their official name.

For example my wife’s Great-Grandfather was known as Bob.  His real name was Joshua, and that is what is on every official document about him.

The great thing so far is that it is all free up to this point.  If you can go back far enough (to 1881) you will be able to search the census for free.  This can be done at Family Search, Ancestry (free registration required) or Find My Past (free registration required).

However, if you get stuck with Grandad Horace, who was born in Cheltenham in 1896 then you will need to look for certificates.

You may know that Horace married Hilda sometime around 1920 – because your father was born in 1923 and was their only child, for example.

Be warned that this sort of logic doesn’t always follow and many people, despite what we are led to believe, had children before they got married.  Sometimes several years.   Sometimes never getting married and just living together because they were still married to someone else and hadn’t got divorced. 

Do not be surprised if you uncover this sort of behaviour, as from my own research it is not uncommon.

Anyway, to put us back on track, you can search the Births, Marriages and Deaths index online to see if you can find when Horace married Hilda.

Now this will cost money – either a subscription, or pay per view.  Most sites offer a free trial so go for this and cancel if you don’t get on with it.

But more on that next time.

Brief Aims and Getting Started

The Department of Diagnostic Genealogy has two key aims:

Help people new to family research get started.

Help people old to family research look at problems in different ways.

Some of you reading this will know exactly what you are doing and think that no one can help if you have a problem, but you have nothing to lose by asking.  Some of you may think it is all too complicated to even start.

Yet all you truly need is patience and persistence.

In the meantime, if you are just dabbling with family matters and wondering who that soldier is in that old photo or why great-grandad never spoke of his parents or brothers and sisters, we could help.

When I started out in genealogy I had just two questions:  When did my great-uncle Laurie die during the First World War? and What's the deal with my Irish Great-Grandad?

I found the answer to both these questions, and since then I have unearthed dozens more questions which have been answered.  Not all - there is always one more thing to discover.  At least one.

But if you do have a question, no matter how complex or how trivial you think it is, ask away.  The worst we will do is hurl rotten tomatoes at you  is say we can't help.  But we will always try pretty hard.

Why do this?  Because family history is important and I want everyone to be as passionate about it as I am.

You don't even have to contact me.  You can go it alone.  Sign up to Ancestry or Find My Past.  Try it for a while, see how you go.  If you have never done anything like this before but are lucky enough to know details of anyone alive in 1881 you will find the census for that year is free, so have a search around.

You may find something intriguing.   If you get stuck, I'm always willing to have a look or nudge you in the right direction.

The next blog will be about what to do if you decide you want to do more than dabble!


Rob
Department of Diagnostic Genealogy

Welcome to the Department

This is the first blog for us; the Department of Diagnostic Genealogy.

We are an evolved form of genealogist.  From diverse business backgrounds, obviously dating back through the ages, we have reached this point of unsurpassed expertise.

When others say you can get no further, we are here to say you can.   When you can't get past that brick wall, we will find the loose piece of cement.

You get the idea.

To coin a phrase, with a little help from our twin organisation who deal in rather more mundane matters;

"If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... : The Department of Diagnostic Genealogy."

You've found us, that's the hard part over.

We are here to show that genealogy is not an activity only enjoyed by old timers, hunched over a pile of old documents, working by candlelight and straining to decipher the latin scrawl of a semi-literate priest. 

The past is important.  What your ancestors did is worth discovering.  For centuries people struggled, laboured tirelessly and yet kept on going.  It took thousands of people to create you.  Had just one of them said 'Sod it, I'm going to stay single and look out for number one' you would not be here now.

Whether you want to find out who your great-grandparents were or who represented you at the Battle of Waterloo, we're here to help.   

Post your questions. 

The Department of Diagnostic Genealogy