My ‘Aunt Kitty’ and her husband did not have any children, so in her will she had stipulated what possessions she wanted to go to which relatives. She was one of eight children and her husband was one of nine, so there were a lot of nephews and nieces as well as great nephews and nieces identified.  In total there were 43 named individuals given, mostly with towns where they lived and their relationship to her were all documented in this will, a treasure trove for the family historian.

A few years ago now, I was researching for a client the contents of a letter that was written in 1829 concerning a family called Wyatt, a farming family who originally hailed from Staffordshire.  To cut a long story short I needed to look at two wills, one from 1818 and the other from 1853.   Both detailed a copious amount of information regarding family members and their relationship to the deceased person.  The 1853 will of Lewis William Wyatt detailed over 30 relatives of his.  

Of course not all wills will give you the volume of information regarding family members as the two mentioned above have. However it is still very much worth endeavouring to find the wills and probate documents of your ancestors.  Over the centuries the writing of wills and the granting of probate were not confined to one section of society, even those of humble origins often left a will so it is well worth searching for them.

Only last month I found the probate records of a distant relative of mine who died in 1904 and left her estate worth £78 13s 3d to her sole surviving daughter. I find that it is often filling in the little pieces of information around an individual that makes researching your ancestors so rewarding.

Graham Hicks

Ancestral Stories

To learn more about the services I offer, access my website HERE

After my mother died so it was with me, in amongst a small box of costume jewellery was an old blackly tarnished silver medal. With no ribbon or suspender it had, at some point in its life, been transformed into a badge or brooch with a clasp soldered onto the back, but still plainly visible were the words “For Long Service and Good Conduct”  Looking closely at it I could make out the inscription on the rim “74. SERGT J. FAULKS. 1 – 17 FOOT.  

Intrigued, I wanted to find out more about Sgt J Faulks.   I knew my Great Great Grandfather was John Faulks (born 1842) but I was not sure what his occupation was. In the 1881 census he is described as a ‘Pensioner’ at the tender age of just 39! However in later census his occupation was described as a Clerk and Printers Clerk.  In the same 1881 census I see my Great Grandmother aged 8 was born in Lucknow East Indies.

The Army Long Service and Good Conduct medal was first authorised in 1830 and to receive it the basic requirement was to have served 21 years in the ranks with a high standard of conduct. So what I wanted to find was his army service record.  This would detail when he joined up, where he served, when he was promoted and hopefully a whole host of other information.  Service records for this period are held at the National Archives in Kew London and it was from there that I got what I needed.

His record states he joined the 17^th Regiment of Foot in Leicester on 12^th October 1857 aged 18.  Now unfortunately he must have lied about his age (a common practice at the time) as I know he was born in May 1842 so he was 15 years 5 months old when he signed up.   He was promoted Corporal in 1868 and to Sergeant by early 1870. During his service he spent nearly 7 years in North America and 9 years in the East Indies.  He was awarded this medal on 22 November 1876 and with it a £5 gratuity, not an insignificant amount in 1876!

All this information and the starting point was a medal issued for Long Service and Good Conduct over 135 years ago.

Graham Hicks

Ancestral Stories

To learn more about the services I offer, access my website  CLICK HERE

Gradually, over the years, mellowing politically, as most of us do, I have forgotten some of the reasons I used to give for not wearing a poppy. I think people wear them for all kinds of reasons now, that maybe were not part of the agenda then, when the wars we were remembering were the two world wars, and the one we were trying to see the back of was Vietnam.

So, in recent years, I have bought my poppy, worn it on 11/11, if I’ve been able to remember where I put it after I bought it, joined in 2 minutes silence, and genuinely reflected on the horrors of war, and been grateful that I have had no serving soldiers within my close family or amongst friends.

This year has been really different.

Last December I finished transcribing the “war memoirs” of a good friend’s father. He was in the London Rifle Brigade, and joined up at 19, in 1939. He is 91 in a few weeks time, and still suffers from night terrors. His son wondered if writing things down might help him deal with some of the horrors he still feels on a daily , or rather, nightly basis. He saw dreadful things, close friends killed by snipers, standing next to him, distorted bodies of English and German boys…..tarring and feathering of collaborators, gruesome sights that I could only imagine, as I transcribed his spidery handwriting.

Today I have been thinking of Mike Hicks and all the friends he lost, and hoping that Mike copes with today as I know that it is always hard for him.

Also, during the last year I have been working on my own family history. My infamous bigamist grandfather who had 3 wives who knew nothing of each other, and 3 sons, the youngest being my dad, who also knew nothing of each other’s existence. Grandfather William Murch-Whelen deserted his first wife at the end of the 1st World War. He had married her in 1912, their beautiful curly haired son John was born in 1914, and then he went to war. He never went home. He was awarded medals for meritous service beyond the call of duty, in France and Flanders, but he never went home….he went on to marry and desert another wife and child before he met my grandmother, who he also “married”.

He was an old ( not actually very old…only 60 ) man during the 2nd World War. He became a firewatchman, until he had a complete breakdown, and was sectioned. He died in a mental hospital at the end of 1945.

So, I have also been thinking about my grandfather. The cousins I have discovered that share the same bigamist grandfather, and I have forgiven him for what he did to the women and children he deserted. I expect they were thinking about him today as well. I can only guess at what he saw in the trenches, and I am unable to judge him for what at first seemed to be unforgiveable actions in his relationships “at home”.

I have also spent today thinking about Luther Adolphus Dawes, Herefordshire Regiment, born 1896, died 1917, buried in a war grave in Beersheba ( now Israel), that no family has ever been able to visit. He was one my other grandfather’s older brothers, one of my great grandmother Mary’s babies.

So, Mike, William and Luther….. today I wear my poppy, maybe for the first time ever, in real remembrance of you, but also because I think my youthful feelings about it all were basically right. We must hate war, and what it does to our children. Mike and William and Luther were children, no matter how old they actually were.

The road on which our new French house is situated is called “Rue du Maquis de Trassanel”. Les maquis were the resistance fighters that lived in the mountain areas of southern France under the Vichy government. Just a few miles from our house, 48 resistance fighters were killed in cave in Trassanel, where they were hiding, in 1944. Most of them were….. young boys….. just children.

I am so happy that Kieron is no longer in the army, I am so happy that Jan and Mick’s son Peter changed his mind about joining up. I understand people’s pride in what their children do when fighting for their country. I am proud of Mike and William and Luther…..but I am devastated by what war does to people, and families….and by wearing my poppy in remembrance, I am also childishly, teenagerishly wishing for peace.

Janice

To see the original Blog click here Poppy Thoughts

The other week as an example I was contacted by client who had spent months trying to find the birth details of a Great Great Grandfather.  From information gleaned form the census of 1851 and 1861 they knew he was born around 1845 and appeared to be an only child.  Searches of the Civil Registration lists had not been successful, so it appeared that his birth had not been registered.  Although Civil Registration of Births, Marriages & Deaths had been made compulsory in 1837, there was no financial penalty to parents for not registering a birth until a change in the legislation in 1874, so we know that there are many gaps in the register before this date.

So having not been successful in looking for the birth details in the Civil Registration records, they tried the next obvious thing which is looking at church records for his Baptism details.  Now it is also true that not all children were baptised and if they were they are not necessarily baptised in the same year they were born.  If you have ever trawled through years of baptism records on microfilm at a record office you will not have failed to notice  batches of three, four or more children with the same surname being baptised at the same time, almost as a ‘job lot’.  The oldest may have been born a decade before. 

Anyway after countless hours searching through the records of various parish churches they still drew a blank…and were stuck.  While researching if I ever I find myself in this position the next thing I do is think about other resources that might be available that may contain information about the early life of an individual.  From the 1700’s onwards Nonconformity in Britain really became established and it is at the records that were generated by these groups that I tend to look at next.

So you may be asking yourself what was ‘Nonconformity’?  The established church, after Henry VIII split fromRome, was the Church of England.  By the 1650’s there were various splits or factions within the established church (all classed as dissenters) so much so that many ‘new’ denominations had appeared.  The one thing that they pretty much had in common was that they all subscribed to the notion of the ‘priesthood of all believers’.  Any believer could communicate with God without the necessity of having a clergyman to act as an intermediary.  This was a direct threat to the authority of the established church and their clergy. 

These new denominations all had differences but we know them as Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, Quakers, Unitarians and many more besides.  By and large they all kept records about baptisms, marriages and burials and so it was that I was able to direct my client to a selection of these records and they found what they were looking for.

Graham Hicks

Ancestral Stories

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