Tag: War Dead

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New Searchable War Memorials

 

 

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NEWS:
Press Release from TheGenealogist

New Searchable War Memorials

TheGenealogist has just released over 12,000 records from 138 War Memorials. This means that there are now a total of over 580,000 individuals on War Memorials that are fully searchable in TheGenealogist’s Military records with photographs centred on their inscription. These memorials can give researchers an insight into education, rank, regiment and occupation of an ancestor.

Red Deer 55th Street Cemetery Alberta, Canada - RAF Deaths At Penhold
Red Deer 55th Street Cemetery Alberta, Canada – RAF Deaths At Penhold

The War Memorial records will allow the family history researcher to discover:

● over 12,000 additional individuals recorded on War Memorials
● additional War Memorials from England and Canada
● fully searchable records which are transcribed from images of the tributes
● colour images of the memorial centred on their name
● a variety of memorials in honour of the war dead from various conflicts

The Map Explorer™ on TheGenealogist can also be used to locate all the War Memorials on georeferenced historic and modern maps making them easy to find. The War Memorial database includes names from the Boer War, the First World War and World War II. This latest release from TheGenealogist covers war memorials from various parts of the UK, particularly West Yorkshire, County Durham and East Sussex as well as Canada.

This new release covers memorials that are not all set in stone or cast in iron. There is the WW1 memorial volume book held in Darlington Central Library for Pease and Partners of Darlington. This firm owned mines, quarries and other works all over County Durham and Teesside. This particular memorial is useful to a researcher wanting to “break down barriers” as it not only gives the rank and regiment of the man, but also gives his place of occupation (which particular mine, quarry, or works they had been employed in) which could aid a researcher to try to get the employment record for an ancestor – the volume is divided into sections for the 543 men who died, over 4,100 who served and details of the medals awarded to 134 of them.

Other employment War Memorials in this release include: Yorks & Lancs Railway locomotive works at Horwich where 122 employees were killed in WW1 and in London the Worshipful Company of Armourers and Braziers recording 37 men who were killed or served in WW1 and WW2.

1914 1919 The Great War: Liverymen and Freemen of the Worshipful Company of Armourers and Brasiers
1914 1919 The Great War: Liverymen and Freemen of the Worshipful Company of Armourers and Brasiers

Additional School and college War Memorials added this time include Petworth Boys school, which commemorates 2 teachers and 28 pupils killed in 1942 when the school was destroyed by enemy action, and King’s College Cambridge where 345 students or former students etc. are commemorated having been killed in both the First and Second World War.

Of further note are War Memorials in Pimlico, London where 67 men from a Peabody Estate who were killed in WW1 are recorded. There is an interesting set of stained glass windows in Grimsby Minster dedicated to 25 Grimsby men lost in WW2 who were members of various clubs such as the Grimsby Cyclists’ Club. In this release there is a memorial in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada to 35 men of the RAF killed there during their training and in Eastbourne Town Hall there is a roll of 180 civilians or firefighters etc. killed there in WW2 by enemy action.

These records are available to Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist as part of their large Military Records collection.

Read TheGenealogist’s article: Using War Memorials to research ancestors from the First World War

 

 

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‘National Union of Teachers’ War Records from 1914 to 1919

 

I was passing by a village war memorial this week, still resplendent with its poppy wreaths from the  remembrance day service. I took to wondering about who these named individuals, carved in stone, were and what their lives had been before they went off to fight and die for their country.

So it is sort of apt that I just got this in from TheGenealogist. It deals with the National Union of Teacher’ War Records, giving some insight into one set of professionals who answered the call to go to war.

 

The Diamond subscription on TheGenealogist now has over 18,000 new records to access from the ‘National Union of Teachers’ War Records from 1914 to 1919. These records include a list of teachers who joined the forces, those who received honours, and also those who were sadly killed, plus other information relating to the National Union of Teachers during the war.

J Harrison V.C. M.C.

Covering all N.U.T. members who served in the war and also discussing issues of the time, such as pensions, salary levels of teachers who joined the army and fund raising for relief in Europe.

 

The records are a comprehensive list of members of the National Union of Teachers who served in the Great War. The teaching profession and its members responded to the great nationwide pressure to ‘do their bit’, with most male teachers of service age answering the call to arms.

The ‘National Union of Teachers’ had a number of courageous medal recipients amongst its members. Listed here is 2nd Lieutenant Jack Harrison of the East Yorkshire Regiment. He was killed in May 1917 in Oppy Wood, France aged 27. After having earlier won the Military Cross for bravery, he was posthumously awarded a Victoria Cross for single-handedly attacking a German machine gun post to protect his platoon. His body was never found.

He taught at Lime Street Council School in Hull and also played rugby league for Hull FC as a prolific try scorer. He is listed among the ‘Gallant War Dead’ in the records along with the name of his school.

Hull War Dead

 

The records provide an interesting insight into how a specific profession and its union coped with the events of The Great War. Taken from the National Union of Teachers War Records 1914 to 1919 publication, the records can be found in the War Service Lists in the Military Records section on TheGenealogist.

Mark Bayley, Head of Online Content at TheGenealogist comments: “The war affected so many lives, but it can often be hard to trace records for those who survived. This is why TheGenealogist is committed to providing more unique records of those who survived, whether they are casualty lists, prisoners of war, or in this case full service lists for specific professions. We are aiming to continually add more of these specialist records to provide family historians with more unique data at their fingertips.”

Take a look at TheGenealogist.co.uk to search these records.

The Genealogist - UK census, BMDs and more online

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Free military records at Ancestry UK!

 

Just got this through from Ancestry…

 

In honour of Remembrance Day, Ancestry is opening up millions of military records to give everyone the chance to journey back in time and discover the war heroes in their family.

Between 08 and 12 November 2013, 3.6 million records will be freely available from four important military collections:

  • WWI Service Records (1914 – 1920)
  • WWII Army Roll of Honour (1939 – 1945)
  • Navy Medal and Roll Awards (1793 – 1972)
  • Victoria Cross Medals (1857 – 2007)

Almost every family in the country will have relatives who once served their country, so these records are an excellent source of discovery.

Travel back through 100 years of military history to find physical descriptions, next of kin, medals awarded, places served, disciplinary procedures, photos, dates and places of death ? and much more.

New WWII collection

Ancestry has added new Civilian War Dead records from WWII, which hold the names of 60,000 civilians who perished during the Second World War. People died in their homes, offices, factories, schools and public vehicles during the terrifying bombings and air raids.
London was hardest hit so the London Boroughs have lengthy casualty lists, but the collection also covers many other cities, including Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham and York.

Take a look here: Ancestry.co.uk

 

 

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Brick Walls in Family History – Incorrect Information.

I have been doing some family history research this week to try and find a burial plot for someone that had been killed in action in World War II.

The information that I had passed on to me, identified a particular cemetery and came with a plot number. This seemed to circumnavigate a great deal of time for me searching out the details myself. On visiting that burial ground, however, the gave in the particular plot belonged to a completely different named family and was not that of the fallen soldier that I was looking for. The details had come to me via a member of the family and had been given to them by an archivist for one of the British Army’s Regiments. Somehow the cemetery that the soldier was buried in had become mixed up with another one in the same town and supplied in error.

On realising that the details that I had were wrong, I went back to basics and did a search of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website. Here I was able to find the correct burial ground to go and visit and locate the grave in question.

The actual grave itself also cleared up some other queries that I had, as it was shared with members of the man’s maternal family as well as his father. What it revealed was that the  maternal surname was spelt differently from that which we had previously been given to understand and that his grandmother’s first name was not Daisy but was actually Minnie.

The lesson that I took away, yet again, is that information passed down a family can become clouded. Perhaps Minnie was always known as Daisy and her nick name had been remembered, while her given name had been forgotten, or it was just a simple mistake in recalling the name.

Surnames can be spelt differently. An example is that mine is Thorne with an “e”. But go back four generations and my ancestor spelt it without an “e” for part of his life and with one for the latter part. His father spelt it without.

The best rule of Family History is to always check details of ancestors in primary sources and to beware of transcription errors, those mistakes made in family folklore and second-hand information in general.

 

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