Tracing family tree…WW1 specific

So, MCJnr has a chance to go to the WW1 battlefield sites on a school trip at the end of the year ad we got to wondering what relatives in our familys past may have served during that war.

I know what both my grandfathers did in WW2, but have no knowledge beyond that. My dad has had nothing to do with his family since before I was born, so I know nothing about that side and precious little about my mums side. And then, of course, there is my wife’s family as well.

I think it would be a really good project to work on together with him. Any tips on how/where to start?

commonwealth wargraves commission website has details of those that lost lives, often right down to the exact gravestone, in which cemetary in france.

ancestry.co.uk is good for tracing back, and has access to lots of records, and often gives hints to family members signing up. often those hints come from not so distant cousins who have found info already.

some quite interesting stories sometimes. I’m up to 1 murder, 2 died in the Somme, 1 designer of the Lancaster bomber, and one diplomat banged up in cairo in the suez crisis, and one awarded medals for bravery in the Boer war (or one of them) but later revoked due to desertion.

My wife is a keen genealogist and her advice is: Try using Ancestry (sometimes there are free trials) to see if there are any ‘public’ trees linked to your family (e.g. grandparents) that you can track back to the period, particularly via the 1911 census records and maybe Forces War Records for the in-depth details for specific individuals. My wife traced her great grandfather and it was quite poignant to visit and see his name on the Arras Memorial along with thousands of others.

Cheers. Ancestry was the obvious choice but I wasn’t sure how far you could get for free.

unfortunatley you’ll be needing to cough up in order to get access to all the good stuff.

but the sensible thing is o start with what you know, use it for free to build a tree, and it’ll start finding hints for you.

also genesreunited.co.uk (or is it .com?)

not sure i’d go in with the specific aim of finding ww1 family, but go in with the aim of building the tree back a few generations. the ww1 stuff then tends to appear – it’s going to be great uncles and great great uncles that you find have served.

the 1911 census is very valuable (great grandparents that I can remember are on there in their handwriting). i can’t wait for 1921 (my grandparents will be on that).

We have a retired chap up the road from us who does family trees and research for £50, he did one for me and got back to 1600’s pretty quickly following the paternal line. Basically he pays £500 a year for the various websites and databases, and as long as he does 10 a year to cover costs he’s happy and just does it as a hobby. I can pass details if interested, or contact him via his other passion: http://www.radiomuseum.co.uk cheers

My folks did a bunch of stuff through ancestry, they knew the 1900 forward stuff mostly but did say you would suddenly make a connection and a pile of stuff would come out from other peoples research so it could be quite quick these days.

Cheers redstripe. I’ll bear him in mind if we get stuck on it, but would like to have a go at this as a family project if we can

Sometimes things are just lying around in drawers, like this pocket knife belonging to one of my relatives.

The grave is in the churchyard in Slaughterford, a tiny village near where my dad grew up, my granddad and great grandad are buried there, along with their wives, and the men worked in the papermill in the village.
Which kind of refers back to the Anglo-Saxon thread, and people not moving far from their family locations.

My sisters doing well with ours, we’ve just found that our great uncle was killed on the Somme on 6th July 1916. (I didn’t know I had a great uncle)

not sure i’d go in with the specific aim of finding ww1 family, but go in with the aim of building the tree back a few generations. the ww1 stuff then tends to appear – it’s going to be great uncles and great great uncles that you find have served.

Which is how she found out!

The only thing I would say, is that if you start doing your tree, double check the information on other peoples’ trees before you start adding them to yours… this will make sense once you start.

I made this mistake and had two of the same person on the tree, but as details were slightly different it just added them on.

Just spent two days in France for commemorations for the Battle of Boars head, a day before the Somme, where my Great Grandfather fought and was wounded, along with another relative who was only 17, but sadly died.

We then headed down to Flatiron Copse, where I surprised my Dad by showing him the grave of his Great Uncle (he never knew he existed? killed during the Battle of the Somme. He got very emotional.

If you can get some basic details such as name/regiment and service number, this is an excellent website, and you get real military geeks who will really help you out if you post something. http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php

They will find war diaries etc. which may mention your relative.