Family Historian User Group

In remembrance of those who fought and still fight for our freedom and our way of life.

Charles MOORE (1892-1915)

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ID:3105

I'd like to remember my second cousin twice removed, Private Robert Major Harenburg, who died at Mansell Copse on the Somme on 1st July 1916, barely 17 years old. I can't help wondering how this country boy stood up to teasing about his German name.

His grandmother Mary Ann Bell Major, a servant from Honiton in Devon, somehow found herself in London and on 22 October 1865 she married Edward Harenburg, a leather bag maker born in Berlin. A son Edward was born a year later, but only lived for a year. A second son, Alfred, was born in 1868, but by 1869 his father had died of Phthisis pulmonaris (TB). Mary Ann returned with Alfred to a quieter life in Honiton, where she remarried and had 3 more children.

Alfred Harenburg grew up in Honiton where he worked as a gardener and a postman, married in 1889 and had 5 sons and a daughter. Robert was the fourth son, born 1899. He is buried in the Devonshire Cemetery, near Mametz, France. Unlike other graveyards where the dead of different regiments and nations are mixed in together, it is devoted to a single unit and their dead from one day. 163 men are buried there. Three days after the attack the Germans were forced back and the Devons collected their dead from no man's land. A mass grave was fashioned out of the support line trench from where they went over the top and a wooden plaque was set up reading 'The Devonshires held this trench, The Devonshires hold it still'.

And the civilians who died too - remembering Rachel Lord and her three children who died in 1940 from 'enemy action'

Rfn Joseph Bye S/28108. Died of wounds 28 Sep 1917 while serving with 16th Btn Rifle Brigade.
Pte Simon Edgar Rex S/5770, 4th Btn Middlesex Regiment. KIA 31 Dec 1915.
Pte Jeremiah Bowles 3309 19th Hussars (Boar War) & 429686 Labour Corps (WW1).