* Military records

[jmurphy]

Every Remembrance Day, Ancestry in its various incarnations offers free access to its Military record collections. I seem to be stuck in a loop of not finding anything, or I should say, not finding anything on Ancestry.co.uk.

This is hardly surprising, given that most of the people who served that I am looking for had British Army service before the Great War. For those who did happen to serve late enough that they were also in the Great War, it's no surprise if I can't find anything, given how many records were burned.

Today's frustration came from a review of prior research, where I have the service records from Find My Past. It clearly says that my Alfred Clarke served in China in the 1860s and should have clasps for two campaigns, one for Taku Forts and one for Pekin. But when I search for him in the medal rolls on Ancestry.co.uk, whether I use his military service number or not, I can't find him..

I started to look through the appropriate 'microfilm roll' with a browse, but gave it up after several pages due to a lack of waypoints. However, I have a new appreciation for why 'my' Alfred might not be turning up on a service number search -- for some pages, the numbers are buried in the binding -- and for some pages, your service member's name might be lost in the binding, too.

After the free access is over, I hope to review all the records I do have access to on Find My Past and write myself a detailed report of where I left off and what I'd like to find, so I can pick it up again during the next free access on Ancestry.co.uk.

I also wanted to warn you that Fold3, which is owned by Ancestry, has issued a press release saying that they hope to include military records from around the world, instead of the focus they have now on just US records. I wonder if some bean-counter has decided to boost the number of military records Ancestry can boast about by adding the UK & Commonwealth military records to Fold3, without actually adding any new content that a World Plus subscriber already has.

If you'd like to share your rants and success stories, I'd love to hear them.

[tatewise]

I am no expert in this area but have you tried The National Archives that are mentioned in our research:useful_research_web_sites|> Useful Research Web Sites:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help ... d-maritime

[jmurphy]

Thanks, Mike. While I have read some of the material at TNA's site, I had not seen that portal.

Alfred Clarke married one of my husband's distant cousins, and now I am working forward trying to establish a timeline of their descendants. This week I'm reviewing the records of Alfred and his three sons to see if I have missed any records, and to see which if any of them might have followed their father and also served in the British Army.

It's frustrating to have someone's attestation and service record from Find My Past which clearly states which medals they were awarded, then to search the medal rolls on Ancestry and come up empty. (It may be that not many of the medal rolls on Ancestry are campaign and service medals -- I'll check the 'about the database' material to see what's what.)

I wanted to post here in part to warn people that if they do have a service number and unit, but can't find their service member in the medal rolls, it may be because the service number wasn't legible in the original and thus isn't in the Ancestry index.

I often describe the study of family history as being like putting together jigsaw puzzles -- where someone has combined millions of puzzles into one big pot, where many of the puzzles have missing pieces.

For this particular task, though, it is more like dominoes. I have a handful of very specific records that seem to be the right people, and I'm trying to flesh out the picture by gathering up the less-specific records that are pointed to by the full records -- and it's the less-specific records that aren't turning up.

Another oddity is that despite having the records of where Alfred served, so that I know where he was supposed to be in both 1861 and 1871, I am not finding him in the Worldwide Army Indexes on Find My Past.

[AdrianBruce]

Really, I should have known that you wouldn't ask a trivial question, Jan..... I am puzzled.

I am assuming that your Alfred Clarke is number 178, from Brighton, died 8/10/10 Plymouth - for the very good reason that, according to FMP, I have checked his pages before and there must have been a reason for that. I'm hoping the reason is that he's yours but can you please check below....?

His attestation form records his number as 178/12 or 178/2. The "/" is actually a horizontal line and I can't make up my mind whether the downstroke of the 7 carries through (in which case he's 178/2) or not (in which case it's a separate line beneath and he's 178/12). Subsequent sheets seem to have 178/2. His wife is Emily and he has the 1860 China Medal with clasps for Taku (and I think it may mention Peking in the fold - he was there, according to the lines above).

Please tell me if I've got the wrong guy....

William Spencer's Medals: The Researcher's Guide, The National Archives, 2008 tells me that the records for the 2nd China War Medal for the Army are spread across 2 pieces: WO 100/40 and WO 100/41. The Artillery are in /40.

I browsed Ancestry's UK, Military Campaign Medal and Award Rolls, 1793-1949 to Asia / China 1842-1860 and the relevant piece appears - you don't see the TNA reference until you see the images but the description matches and then WO 100/40 is the film (of 187 images) that you see, branded with that reference.

Then it's a case of pot luck browsing through, initially relying on clerks acting logically. It seemed possible to see where the start of a new unit was so moving swiftly on, it didn't take long to find the Royal Artillery and after a few officers sheets, I reached image 29, which is Lt Colonel Barry's "A" Battery, 4th Brigade, Royal Artillery. Alfred Clarke from FMP was in 4 Bde from 1859-1861 and he was ranked as a driver.

Trying to work out the clerk's arrangement of the roll takes a little time - it appears to be that the arrangement is by rank, then alphabetical (roughly) within rank - this means that all the trumpeters are together, all the gunners, and then, on image 32 (lower half), the "Dr" (drivers) start. (Another Battery I saw ordered them in numerical order, by the way).

This is where it starts going pear shaped.

Driver Alfred Clarke is there - issue 1 is that, if I click the "Show index" button, he's down as "Alfred Charke". (I've submitted a correction).

Issue 2 is that he's down as number 1103. Which ain't anything like 178/2...

It has to be him - I came at it the other way, doing a search for name of Alfred, Campaign = China Wars, Regiment = Artillery - and there are sufficiently few Alfreds to check that he's the only one with anything like the correct name.

Also odd is that there's a Nicholas Brady of 7th Battery 14th Brigade, Royal Artillery in the same campaign, with the same number 1103. So I don't know what that number represents - clearly not a number across all the RA.

Oh guess who appears in the 1861 Worldwide Army Index Transcription with a number of 1103??? Alfred Clarke...

[jmurphy]

Really, I should have known that you wouldn't ask a trivial question, Jan..... I am puzzled.

I am assuming that your Alfred Clarke is number 178, from Brighton, died 8/10/10 Plymouth - for the very good reason that, according to FMP, I have checked his pages before and there must have been a reason for that. I'm hoping the reason is that he's yours but can you please check below....?

Yes, indeed, that is the right person, and I had written him up before in a question on G&FH.SE (asking whether he and his family and other families in India would have been in the 1881 Census or not).

I may even have seen and downloaded the medal roll images on a previous free access period, but I didn't attach them to my tree. I desperately need a do-over so I can get all my previously-collected material sorted and entered into FH -- using Ancestry and FMP's online trees as a sort of quick and dirty backup to remind myself of what I've already found where until I can analyze things and get them properly sorted is clearly not working.

The other person I was working on this week was Frederick Richard Clarke, Alfred's son, whom I've also mentioned on G&FH.SE. I am trying to figure out if the F.R. Clarke in the Royal Artillery attestations 1883-1942 on Find My Past (which are records from the RA themselves, not the War Office) is the same person or not. That Frederick Richard has service numbers of 1400067 and 11684. I was hunting for him in the various WO records but haven't had much luck so far. Part of the reason may be that his discharge date is after 1920; the TNA guide Mike steered me to says that the collections on Ancestry don't have people discharged after that date.

I've also been looking at Paul Nixon's blog at http://armyservicenumbers.blogspot.com/.

I need to review all the documents I have, and write notes about whether I think they belong to 'my' people or not, so I can pick up again later without thrashing about. (E.g. the Frederick Richard above was born in Begaum, India, the same as Alfred's son Fredrick Richard).

Thanks for your reply.

P.S. the relevant G&FH.SE questions with Alfred Clarke:
1881 Census? http://genealogy.stackexchange.com/q/5358/1006
tours of duty? http://genealogy.stackexchange.com/q/5364/1006

Alfred's attestation papers list him as a groom, and post-discharge he is on the census as a coachman; those would be consistent with his duties as a driver. I'm still curious about the later census where he appears as a canteen steward, but that's another question.

[themoudie]

Aye "jmurphy",
Thank you for posting the link to Paul Nixon's Blog, just the ticket, as I have been trying to decipher my Grandfathers Army Service number and the answer is on Paul's blog. Some of the heiroglyphics on Grandfather's medal card will require even greater knowledge!

All the best with your research.

My regards, Bill

[jmurphy]

Hi, Bill --

I found out about Paul Nixon's blog because of a webinar he did -- if I recall correctly, it was offered as one of the "Find My Past Firsts" perks.

Glad the information helped!

[jmurphy]

My Eureka! moment of the weekend, from Ancestry's database UK, British Army and Navy Birth, Marriage and Death Records, 1730-1960, specifically Royal Artillery Records of Service and Papers from WO 69/554:

I discovered that TNA's Discovery has the names of people in the records as part of their catalog description, and used the information at TNA to inform browsing the records at Ancestry (well, I knew that already, but there were more extensive transcriptions of the records than I was expecting to find).

A caution: if TNA says the records have not been digitised yet, that note might be stale.

Blow by-blow-description of how I went from Ancestry to TNA and back to Ancestry again at Genealogy and Family History Stack Exchange: Finding TNA Discovery catalog entries for digital images on Ancestry?