Category Archives: General

Australian soldiers in WWI

Most of my family and friends know I can spot a war memorial or a CWGC headstone at a great distance.  My family make a joke out of the fact that if I want to go anywhere there has to be an ulterior motive i.e. a memorial of some kind.

Holidays and weekends away have always been expeditions where viewing the countryside was secondary!

On one of our annual trips to Aberfoyle we found a very nice little memorial in Gullane – a nice place on the Edinburgh to North Berwick road (A918).

The memorial to those who died in WW1 & 2 is situated on a grassy section near the golf course.

Back home I started the transcription and followed up with looking to see who these young men were.  There were 3 young men who stood out.  Firstly, James Harper who died in the local police station and rests in the village kirkyard.  Secondly, Hugh Burns who died while in a prisoner of war camp and his service records hold correspondence from his father asking why there is a discrepancy in his date of death.  Thirdly, and the most interesting to a family historian or researcher is the entry on the memorial for Richard H Whitecross.

Richard served in the Australian forces and whose army life was not to say the least – interesting! If you have Australian or Canadian service men who served in WW1 then you will find that their army service records are intact.  The records for UK service men are not so good.  They form part of the Burnt Records as they were damaged by fire in WW2. Saying that the Medal Record Cards are good but their information is limited.

Anyway, back to Richard – he left his home in Gullane for Australia where he went to work as a bricklayer.  His papers tell of his enlistment, give a description, and more to the point tell us where he served and what his attitude was to service life.  Well I can tell you that he was not the most enthusiastic squaddy.  Richard was always on report, failing to turn up for Roll Call, being drunk, AWOL and more.

To read the entry for Richard and the men of Gullane  click here

To look for an Australian soldier from WW1 click here

To visit the Canadian Expeditionary Force records for soldiers  click here

Passports, Leaving the UK and India service

Did your relatives leave the UK ?

Did they have a connection to India? Either in the Army or East India Company – Find My Past have gathered a collection of information that might help in your search.

Fantastic, I found my J Younie in these records working with the Judicial system in Bengal in 1933.  This record was easy to find as all I needed to do was insert his unusual surname.  When looking to see if any other of my far flung lot had a passport… now that opened up another can of worms.

FMP have passport applications from 1851 – 1903 with a few gaps in between, but when entering information into the search boxes they only want the first 3 letters of the surname – making it very time consuming to do a search, especially if your first 3 letters are Mac.  They do have other records in their Migration section. including Passenger listings, that are just as easy to search as the India Office List.  If you find a 3 letter search, just make sure you are in a ‘moochin’ mood so you won’t get frustrated and annoyed looking at every page to find your ‘Mac…’

On the other hand, Ancestry have an Immigration and Travel section which incudes : Alien Arrivals; English Adventurers and Emigrants and UK Incoming Passenger List 1878 – 1960 and all these use a full name search.  Now, how easy is that for the Mac prefix families of the world!

On a more personal note – I use both these websites (well one more than the other) sometimes using one to compliment research gleaned from the other but when it comes down to ease of search, ignoring both their transcriptions errors –  I prefer the  Ancestry  site for its full name search facility.

NOTE :- both Ancestry and Find My Past are pay per view sites, although you can look at some indices for free.

WDYTYA – Who do you think you are?

The Who do you think you are?  Live, makes another appearance at Olympia between the 25 and 27th of February 2011,  there you will find  family history societies and groups exhibiting alongside well known commercial giants at this fantastic gathering.

As well, as the many stands there are a series of talks and workshops and a few celebrities will be taking to the stage including Ainsley Harriot, Monty Don, Hugh Quarshie and Tony Robinson.

So, go rummaging for all your pocket money, raid the piggy bank, make notes of what you want to do, which stalls you want to visit and what information you want to know.  Cancel all your appointments, forget the shopping, leave the kids to get to football on their own and head off to Olynpia.

To visit the WDYTYA website click here

Transcription errors

Is it better to have a document transcribed wrongly than never transcribed at all?

We have all looked at transcriptions on-line – many of us have to as we live in a different town or even worse a different country or continent, and we are very, very grateful for enthusiasts and companies who place these document transcriptions on-line.  I know none of us are perfect and if you are a sole transcriber its hard to check your own work, but where does that leave companies who upload obvious transcription errors – do they have the transcriptions checked?  Are these transcriptions done by people who know British places and surnames?

For many years I’ve been looking at transcriptions of the census – they are a marvelous tool for family and local historians and most of the time the transcriptions have been good.  But….what drives me to distraction are the obvious and  careless errors that have been to be uploaded.

Many are the times I have had to search by just christian name rather than surname as the spelling of that could be any ones guess, then there is the opposite of that search as you would be surprised at some of the spelling variations.  Sometimes I think it’s just a matter of chose a few letters, juggle them about a bit and enter what you have.

While looking for a family member in one of the transcription sites I came across my family – good, as all the children were there including a daughter who had previously been living with her husband.  There was dad, mum, the married daughter, and the rest of the 5 children.  The obvious transcription error was that the children had been transcribed with the surname of the married daughter.  When looking at the original page it was plain to see, dad, mum, married daughter who was  a widow, son, son, daughter, daughter.

I know some of the original documents are very hard to read, have faded or are just in a poor condition but, come on, if you are going to put the effort in, try to make it right!