CUTLER and RANDALL WW1 profiles

New to the website today:

• Serviceman profile for Arthur Edwin Cutler, thanks to Peter Denchfield
• Serviceman profile for Daniel Randall, who passed away 100 years ago today, one day before Armistice Day

Update-a-palooza

Here's a whole assortment of small updates that I had forgotten to tell you about, and other things rescued from their perpetual draft state and published (better to share them as is than wait until they are a perfect and complete record!). In historical order:


For those of you interested in early Wing, there's a new page with some extracts from the 16th-century churchwardens accounts that name residents. There's also some new pages about the history of All Saints Church (previously published elsewhere online). I've illustrated these with several photos taken on my trip to Wing in September 2013.

The marriages for 1838 and 1839 have been added.
 
An extract from the 1848 Topographical Dictionary of England has been added to the Gazetteers page, along with Wing's entry from the 1813 Magna Britannia.

I found the service record for Charles CARTER in the WO363 series and he's been added to the 19th century servicemen list and the Wesleyan Methodist pages. He also had a monobrow but I don't exactly have a page for that.....

New photos have been added to existing pages, such as the millstones that pave the lych-gate which can now been seen on the Milling page.

Sidney CUTLER has been added to the 20th century servicemen page as he joined the Territorials in 1928 (he served in WW1 too but I haven't updated that page for my most recent finds yet).

There's a new section in Explorations - leisure! This currently features some footballers who you may have seen earlier on this blog.

WW1 servicemen profiles

Famous last words on that list of WW1 servicemen I uploaded - I knew there would be some extras to be added once I'd managed to identify more details about them, but I wasn't expecting to trip over numerous others! Five RAF, two Royal Navy and three Army boys so far.

I've also finished profiles of the first couple of WW1 servicemen, both men that died in 1914, and one has been added to the website. This did produce a conundrum for me - as a one-place studier I'm interested in everyone who ever lived in Wing, even if it was just for a short while. You can depend on your research to throw up unusual situations though and that's what I have with this first man. His entry for National Roll of the Great War has his address as Littleworth in Wing, which is why he was on my radar, however I've done a fair bit of digging and I'm pretty sure he never actually lived in Wing!

I do know exactly why he was recorded that way, and what his connection to Wing was, and on balance it seems wrong to exclude him from my list since someone may come across that National Roll entry and want to know why he's not on my list (or I might have a senior moment in future and think I've made a glaring omission!) Also, I have already done all that research which might be of interest to someone out there. My solution was to add him to my servicemen list, with a comment he is "of Stewkley", and include his profile complete with an explanation of his Wing connection. If you are interested in Leonard KEEN of Stewkley who first set foot in France 100 years ago tomorrow, head on over to the first of my Servicemen Profiles page to learn more.

Incidentally, I've decided to set up the servicemen profiles pages with a page for each surname. This follows the same logic as the memorial inscriptions pages, namely that if you are interested in one particular person of that surname you are likely interested in others so I may as well have them together on one page.


I've also tripped over a few non-WW1 servicemen (mostly 19th century) in the process, namely BATES and BOYD, and they have been added to the website.

By the way, that process was via placename searches across Find My Past's WW1 record collection. It looks like some of these likely came as a result of their project to re-scan the WO363/WO364 series, but others will simply be differences in indexing as compared to Ancestry.com.

1831 militia men

There's a very small update to the website today, the addition of three Wing men from the October 1831 muster rolls for the Royal Bucks Militia.

Lights out

Today is the centenary of the outbreak of WW1 and  I have turned the lights out on the Wing One-Place Study website to acknowledge those from Wing that served.

If you continue on to the website, you'll find that the WW1 page has been expanded. You may recall at the beginning of the year I was planning to have profiles of each serviceman up on the website beginning this month. The rapid escalation in the number of men (and women) with Wing connections who served during the war has meant I've now declared this a four-year centenary project. Today I have updated the list of servicepeople, expanding it from 125 to 315 people, so that you can see who I've identified so far - the first step in the project. This won't be my "final" word on the names of WW1 servicemen born in, living in, or with other close connections to Wing, but it's getting there - there's around 50 more men I don't have full names or regiments for yet.

If you have a serviceman ancestor from Wing, have info to share, or are simply keen to see their profile make it online sooner rather than later, please email me so I can prioritise them (and perhaps we can work together on researching them). While you're waiting, can I suggest a trip to the wonderful new Wing At War website from my friend Sarah? She has transcribed the parish magazines for Wing for the WW1 period and collated information on a variety of topics for you to read about.

WW1 servicemen - an update

No, not an update to the website yet, but here's why....

My list of Wing's WW1 servicemen on the website had around 125 men. My offline list of Wing's WW1 servicemen currently has around 360. As I've said before, I may be some time researching.

I have around 20 pairs of men where their names are similar. Some of these will be because they are, in fact, the same man, so my next step is to look specifically at these pairs to see if I can conclusively prove they are the same man and therefore combine their records, or alternatively conclusively prove they are not the same man so I can plough on researching them both. Guess which outcome I'm hoping for?

It's raining men

Servicemen's names, that is......

I have received a big boost to my World War One centenary project. Sarah Roe of the Wing Heritage Group has very kindly sent me the names of servicemen mentioned in the parish magazine written by vicar Francis Henry Tatham during WWI. This has doubled my list of men - now I have 264 known men with Wing connections that served. That's a lot of men for me to research!

Remember, if your ancestor or relative from Wing Buckinghamshire served in WWI please email me (even if you have emailed me before) so that we can share information.

19th century military men

One of my fellow POLLARD descendants (hi Clive!) alerted me to the WO25 military records series in which some of our Pollards are lurking. Along with George and Andrew I found a few other men from Wing recorded in there, and they have now been added to the 19th century military page. If you have ABBOTT, BATES, CLARK, HUBBARD, JAPP, JENNINGS, JORDAN or POLLARD in your tree from Wing in the early 19th century that should please you. There's always more to find out there!

I've also found a couple more WW1 servicemen as I continue on my WW1 project, but I won't be updating the website for them until a bit later on.

WW1 servicemen list updated

I've made a couple of minor tweaks to the military pages today as a result of my research to date into the WWI servicemen. Note that I won't be updating for everything, there will be extended profile pages coming at a future date so I will save most of the changes for then, however I am removing any men that are incorrectly listed on any given military page. Today I've removed an EGGLETON who was born in Askett rather than Ascott, and also removed a DEANE who I suspect wasn't in the RAF until after WWI.

World War One Centenary Project

During 2014 I'm participating in the Society for One-Place Studies annual project to focus on World War One and its impact on our one-place study communities.

I already have a partial list of WWI servicemen from Wing, however I intend to go back and systematically work through researching each man and their service history to create a military profile of them for the website. With 48 casualties recorded on Wing's war memorial and several more known to have died but not been recorded on the memorial, let alone all those who served and returned home, I have my work cut out for me!

If your ancestor or relative from Wing served in World War One please email me (even if you have emailed me before) so that we can share information.

Reworking the military men pages

I know this is not one of the things I said I was going to be working on but I've reworked the military men pages a wee bit. Previously I had these lists split into WWI, WWII, and Other. The Other list was getting a little bit long though, so I've split that into 19th century, 20th century and Other.

The Naval servicemen within them have been spruced up, so to speak. Their date of service has been corrected (the revised catalogue entries at The National Archives make it clear that I had noted their birth year, rather than service year, so I've fixed this - I haven't paid to get copies of their actual records though so the service date is just an indication to the year they joined up I think, not their full service), five more Naval men have been added and the link to the Naval records at The National Archives was updated. I've also added a recipient of merchant marine war medals.

The war memorial page has been updated following the unveiling of the fully restored war memorial in November 2012. The page now includes two new photos of the restored memorial, along with expanded text about the memorial.

I've also updated the photos of the Evelyn Close plaques, now larger and without rain splatters!

March update

This month I've added one more military man - or have I? Arthur Ernest Fountain has a record in the WO97 military pensions series, and while I haven't viewed that record yet I have gone ahead and listed him. He may or may not be the same "A Fountaine, an old soldier" who died in 1916 - watch this space!

The second addition this month is another newspaper report on the coroner's inquest of baby Jane Bowden in 1857. This particular report has detailed quotes from the evidence of a number of Wing residents, but as this crime was a particularly sad one readers may find the report upsetting.

November update

It's November so I'm pleased to announce another addition to the list of Wing military men serving in WW1, Archibald Pitchford.

I was alerted to Archie by an email from a relative. This does demonstrate that there will be men from Wing who served in WW1 or other conflicts that I don't yet have listed, most likely because I can only easily find them in records that are searchable by birthplace. This can be difficult if the birthplace was stated in the underlying record but not extracted and included in the index I was using, which was the case with Archie's record in the WO363 series. You may have identified a serviceman's record where the birthplace isn't stated at all but you know from other information that it's definitely a Wing man, or a serviceman who wasn't born in Wing but lived in Wing! Please do check to make sure your father/grandfather/their siblings from Wing that served are included in my list, and if they're missing send me an email with their details.

We will remember them.

A task of military precision

I've now gathered as many medal roll index cards as I can find for the Wing men who served in WW1 (as listed on the WW1 page, obviously there will be more as-yet-unidentified men). This means that for most of those men I now have at least two separate documents or records of their military service - on my computer there's 10 subdirectories for the different sources I've used.

I need to spend some time revisiting those documents and cross-checking the information contained in them. In some cases there will be additions or corrections to the information on the WW1 page. I'm not planning to extend the information online at this stage though - it's intended to be more of an index, listing basic information about these men's service and the documents I'm aware of that exist for them, so that you have the necessary information to research further as required. Extended profiles of at least one of those men may well appear here on the blog though, so that you can see the kinds of things you might find in those records.

I'm toying with implementing a formal structure to this cross-checking process by picking up some of the ideas from Mark Tucker's Research Documents, in particular the research analysis document. How many of us document the process and resulting "facts" of our research in such a comprehensive way? I found these templates really valuable when looking for the burial of one of my COLES ancestors, and captured within them a lot of useful information about potential burial locations, who holds the burial records, and how easy (or not) it is for me to access those records from NZ - when I next decide to look at it, I'll know exactly what I've ruled out and where to go to see how the necessary digitisation projects are progressing. I think the Research Analysis document, with a little customisation, will be ideal to consolidate each serviceman's records.

The genealogical in-tray (should I call it the GIT for short? it has a certain ring to it, no?) has now officially reached overflow proportions, and this military task will take up some time. If only I didn't keep dreaming up new projects for myself!

Neighbours on Remembrance Day

Ancestry have released the remainder of the records in the WO363 series (the "Burnt Documents" of the service records from WWI). The remainder of the Wing men found in these records will appear on my Wing One Place Study website soon on the WWI military page.

While searching using the residence field only for "Adela" aka Adela Avenue in New Malden where my 2xg-grandfather lived (in the early 1900s he had lived in Wing), it brought home the impact of WWI on the lives of neighbourhoods. As well as my Percy (who isn't in the WO363 series) at #59 Adela Avenue, there was also Isidor BENSON at #19, Ernest Albert COX at #30, Cecil William ELLIOT at #47 and Edward John VINCENT at #65.

Given that only 40% of the service records in this series survive in any form, and this series originally represented only non-commissioned officers and other ranks who survived WWI and did not re-enlist prior to WWII, there would have been plenty of returned serviceman in this street. No doubt there were several other neighbouring households who had a permanent gap in them by the end of the War.

On this Remembrance Day - thanks.

WW2 Women's Land Army

Back in January this year, I wrote about being contacted by the husband of a former Land Girl based at Linslade. I'm currently reading "They Fought In The Fields: The Women's Land Army" by Nicola Tyrer, and learning more about the WLA, the tasks the girls performed and the conditions they worked in. These girls were apparently the last group of agricultural workers to learn "traditional" techniques of working the fields, before the level of mechanisation we are accustomed to today took over.

Of particular interest are the individual stories from the young women - the jobs they left, their reasons for joining and hopes for their new roles, the day-to-day life and experiences they found. Once I've finished reading the book, I'll be heading over to BBC - WW2 People's War to see what memories they have there.

If you, or other family members, were Land Girls, please share your memories - post a comment or send me an email, especially if you spent any time working in the Buckinghamshire or Bedfordshire area.

Wing War Memorial

Excellent news from modern-day Wing this week. The repair work to the War Memorial is about to begin! If you are in the area, do pop in to All Saints Church - Vic Sirett has put together a display about the men on the memorial.

Mapping Our Anzacs

The National Archives of Australia has been busy plotting their ANZAC military records on a world map by birthplace. I do love websites that don't insist on a surname and will let you just search by place, and drilling down on a map is a really fun way to do it! Sadly there's no-one born in Wing listed, but there are men from Stewkley, Wingrave, Linslade, Leighton Buzzard and Cheddington all serving in the Australian forces.

http://mappingouranzacs.naa.gov.au/default.aspx

WW2 - the Home Front

I recently received an email from a gentleman who worked at the depot at Wing during WW2, and his wife was a Land Girl billeted at "Harcourt" at Linslade. We'd love to hear from anyone else who was living in Wing or its surrounding villages during the war, working for the war effort in any capacity, especially if you moved to the area as part of that role.

Wing War Memorial

I received some excellent news today. The renovations to the Wing War Memorial are about to begin. I know those of you that have visited All Saints Church and seen the memorial in the churchyard in recent years have been saddened by the damage time has done to it, and will be happy to see it restored. (If you would like to contribute some funds toward this, please let me know and I can put you in touch with the appropriate people).

In other news, I now have the December 2008 issue of Family Tree Magazine, which mentioned the Wing One Place Study in its article about researching in Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire - thanks, Family Tree Magazine! The entire issue was full of interesting articles so I do recommend that you pick up a copy.