Lest We Forget: 11/11/12

In memory of the members of our family who gave their lives in the service of their country. This list has been updated from last year, with the addition of five more names to the World War 1 Roll of Honour. The list now contains three sets of brothers.

 

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

(Lawrence Binyon, For the Fallen, 1914) 

 

Died	Place	Rank	Name	Age	Regiment / Service
Afghan Wars
12 Jan 1842	Afghanistan	Captain	Edward Macleod Blair	38	Bengal Light Cavalry
Indian Mutiny
14 May 1858	India	Major	John Waterfield	40	Bengal Native Infantry
Boer War
14 Feb 1902	South Africa	Artificer	George Howard Clark	23	Queensland Imperial Bushmen
World War 1
25 Apr1915	France	Private	Richard Michael Ryan	25	Royal Irish Fusiliers
9 May 1915	France	Corporal	Charles Mulligan	28	Black Watch
9 May 1915	France	Rifleman	Thomas Stanley Groves	31	Royal Irish Rifles
27 Jun 1915	Belgium	Private	John Julius Groves	32	DCLI
24 Aug 1916	France	2nd Lieutenant	Lawrence Ernest Bennett	22	Queen’s Regiment
15 Sep 1916	France	Gunner	Cyril William Coles	23	Tank Corps
18 Oct 1916	France	2nd Lieutenant	Christopher Gilbert Durant	20	Worcestershire Regiment
10 Jan 1917	Egypt	Captain	Duncan James Nugent Blair	34	Royal Field Artillery
26 Mar 1917	Palestine	Private	William Gurney	21	Middlesex Regiment
19 Apr 1917	France	Private	Arthur Tom Munden	31	Hampshire Regiment
23 Apr 1917	France	Lance Corporal	Hubert Gurney	21	Middlesex Regiment
10 Jul 1917	Belgium	Lieutenant	Sanford William Shippard	21	North Lancashire Regiment
12 Aug 1917	Greece	Private	Ernest John Bentley	41	Durham Light Infantry
16 Oct 1917	France	Private	Frederick Alexander Drackett	21	Hampshire Regiment
9 Apr 1918	Palestine	Lieutenant	Gilbert Seymour Worsley Spencer-Smith	23	Hampshire Regiment
11 May 1918	France	Captain	Arthur Alexander Austen-Leigh	27	Royal Berkshire Regiment
18 Sep 1918	France	Captain	Eric Fairfax Bennett MC	20	Queen’s Regiment
World War 2
21 Jun 1940	at sea	Sub Lieutenant	Ian Reginald Winn Stileman	20	RNVR
21 May 1941	Crete	Driver	Robert George Davis	25	NZ Army Service Corps
28 Oct 1942	Egypt	Private	Ronald Archibald Halkett-Hay	34	Australian Infantry
3 Nov 1942	Egypt	Lieutenant	Nigel Aves Watson	22	Royal Hussars
13 Jul 1943	Italy	Lieutenant	Derek Pease Gregg	26	Glider Pilot Regiment

10 things my ancestors did to annoy me

The Society of Genealogists sells a booklet called "My Ancestor was a Bastard". I have to admit that is often the way I feel about my own kin.

Here are 10 things they did to annoy me:

1. They settled where three counties meet. That way they could get married in one county, baptise their children in a second and be buried in a third, all without travelling more than a few miles from home. But I have to travel to three different record offices, miles apart, to have any hope of tracing their complicated genealogy.
2. Namesake cousins married namesake girls. I am either descended from John Coles and Mary Holloway, who married at Damerham, Wiltshire on 23 October 1737, or from John Coles and Mary Holloway, who married at Damerham, Wiltshire on 16 December 1738. I bet they are all having a good laugh about that one at the great family reunion in the sky.
3. They were not wise children and did not know their own fathers. Mary Ann Baldwin gave her maiden name as Blakey but her father's name as William Clayton. It took years to find the marriage of Susannah Blakey and William Clayton which proved he was her step-father. William Prebble Barnes invented a bank manager called George Barnes as his father. It took decades to find his illegitimate birth to Elizabeth Prebble.
4. They moved around. Joseph Bentley served as a Methodist minister in 17 different places. Frederick Davis lived in nine different counties and three different countries.
5. They baptised their children in batches, in a place remote from where they were born. Susannah Baldwin was born in Portsmouth and baptised four years later in Gravesend. Thomas Heale baptised his first four children as babies but made the last two wait over twenty years until he had died.
6. They left the country at census time. Thomas Bluett went all the way to New Zealand to avoid an entry in the 1841 census which would have told me whether or not he was born in Ireland.
7. They lied about their ages. Frederick Rayman claimed to be 23 when, aged just 15, he married his pregnant 21 year old bride. Catherine McCarthy stayed 40 for two successive censuses. Alice Wiles was 55 in one census and 72 in the next.
8. They kept just off the page of any printed pedigree. The Red Book of Perthshire contains detailed family trees for the Haldanes, Haliburtons, Reids and Stewarts which stop just short of connecting with my own proven research. Douglas' Baronage of Scotland mentions two of the children of John Smith of Glasswall, but not the daughter through whom I am descended.
9. They disappeared. John Winn sailed to North America, where he vanished. Clement Davis went out prospecting in the Nevis mountains of New Zealand and never came back.
10. They spent all the money. When William Winn died in 1891 he left £82,446 12s 9d, the equivalent of £5.5 million today. His son, William, inherited one quarter. By the time he died in 1906 it was all gone. In the space of 15 years he had squandered the equivalent of over one million pounds on yachts and gold plated taps.