A Brief Obituary of my Great Great Grandmother Susan Ellis

Susan Ellis was my great great grandmother on my mother's side of the family. I discovered this brief obituary on the British Newspaper Archive website. It's from the Friday 17th February 1905 edition of the Western Times, which has news from Devon and the surrounding areas.

Click the image to view the full page (subscription required)

The text is as follows:

MORETONHAMPSTEAD
...
The death of Mrs. Ellis, wife of Mr. John
Ellis, of Doccombe, took place on Sunday
last after a short illness. Deceased has lived
in this little village for the past 62 years, and
for a good many years past has kept the Sub-Post-office
She would have been 82 next month. Her husband, who
survives her, has lived in Doccombe all his life, and is
now 82, and much sympathy is felt for him. The internment
took place in the parish churchyard on Thursday, February 16th,
Rev. S. D. Dewey officiating, and a good number followed her
to her last resting place. The bearers were Messrs. French,
sen. , Crable, sen., Lake, W. Ford, J. Dyment, and Beer.

James Talbot at Gallipoli in 1915

It's exactly one hundred years ago today that my Grandfather, James Talbot, entered the First World War and the Gallipoli Campaign. He was a soldier with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers.

As this blog is about researching my family tree I'll only relate what little I know and how I discovered it. If you want to know more about the Gallipoli campaign then a good place to start is the Wikipedia entry, there is also an account of the Royal Fusiliers' role in this 1922 book about the Royal Fusiliers during the Great War.

I believe that most of my Grandfather's military records were destroyed, so until about a year ago I knew very little about his military history. My Mother had two photos of her father in military uniform, one where he appears to be serving in India:

on the reverse of the first photo there is an advert for the photographer, C D Silva who was based in India:

  The other photo he is wearing the uniform of the Royal Fusiliers:

You can see the RF badge on his shoulder:

Recently my uncle (my Grandfather's son) sent me a couple of documents that revealed a couple of useful details. The first was a letter that my Great Grandmother received from the War Office stating that her son had been hospitalised in Malta due to frostbite on 17th December 1915:

The second document is a Character Certificate which soldiers received after they had left the army:

From these two documents we get the following information about James Talbot:

Regiment: 2nd Battalion Royal Fusiliers

Regimental Number: 14249

Served in: India, Mediterranean & France

Rank: Private in 1915/16, Corporal in 1919

Injuries: Frostbite in 1915 in Malta, wounded in France

 

Once I had James' Regimental Number I found his British Army WWI Medal Rolls Index Card on Ancestry UK:

Here it states that he first entered the war on 25 April 1915 and the Theatre of War was "(2B) Balkans":

I found a webpage listing the WW1 Operational Theatres of War 1914-1920 at http://www.greatwar.co.uk/places/ww1-theatres-of-war.htm

which states that (2B) Balkans was located at Gallipoli.

I still have a few gaps about James Talbot's military history, for example his service in India and how he was wounded in France. If I find out anything more then I'll post it on this blog.


 

Centenary of the First World War

Last year was the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. While I've been researching my family tree I've found a number of relatives who joined and served in the army between 1914 and 1918. I've used two main websites for my research: Ancestry UK and Find My Past. There are millions of military records available to download through both, but they are subscription sites. However, if you don't wish to pay an annual fee and you have a library membership then these records are available for free as long as you access the sites from within your local library. Occasionally both sites have free weekends where most of their records can be viewed and downloaded without paying. It's worth following their Twitter accounts to spot these: https://twitter.com/ancestryuk, https://twitter.com/findmypast

Ancestry UK

Ancestry have their own dedicated First World War landing page at
http://www.ancestry.co.uk/cs/uk/world-war-1

As mentioned above most records require a subscription to view them. But there are a few free record sets including the British Army WWI Medal Rolls Index Cards, 1914-1920. This record set gives information on which medals were awarded to the soldiers.

Find My Past

On Find My Past you can search their military records at http://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-united-kingdom-records-in-military-armed-forces-and-conflict

They also they have a separate dedicated First World War website called IWM Lives of the First World War. This site is partnered with the Imperial War museum. There are a large number of soldiers listed, the records seem to be generated from the British Army WWI Medal Rolls Index Cards mentioned above. The website enables users to create "Life Stories" of the soldiers who are listed by filling in any historical gaps. You can update photos and documents that you own and expand the soldiers online military history.

I've managed to find and download a large number of records from both sites but you might find that there are a few gaps: a large number of First World War records were destroyed by a German bombing raid in the Second World War. I seem to have been fairly lucky with my ancestors and I will be sharing some of the details in future blog posts.

Introducing Stock Tracing

Welcome to my Family History blog. Here I will be sharing some of the discoveries that I've made while researching my family history.

I created my first family tree when I was about 10 years old: that's nearly 40 years ago! And it still exists. As you can see below it was handwritten and has become very tatty.

Now, my family tree is stored online. I'm currently using the online family tree editor which is freely available at https://familysearch.org  This site is run by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's a very comprehensive website, with lots of genealogical resources and is regularly updated. They also have an app for Android phones so that you can view and update your tree while you're out and about. Below is part of the view shown in my original tree as it looks on FamilySearch.org

I managed to create quite a comprehensive family tree early on by asking older family members (my parents, aunts and uncles, grandmother and great aunt) as much as possible about their memories of their families. For example: their parents and grandparents' names; the names of any uncles and aunts; where they lived; what they did for a living; when and where they were born. 

With all this information I have found it easier now to find documents online which relate to my family, especially with regards to census records.

All of the resources that I use for my research are either available free online or via my local library. In future posts I'll give details of some of the discoveries that I've made and what resources that I use.