Military footnote - can anyone translate

Yes Bob and anyone else who this may help, on FMP, when you find a record you are interested in and there is an option to view the original, you may see white arrows at either side of the image, which means there are more than one page to see.

 

Identifying my wife's grandfather was very difficult until I found his military records. Her family were in and around the Stockport,Cheshire area but Portsmouth,Leicester,and Lincoln were the only places where a suitable candidate was born and raised. However, I tried the military records on FMP and almost dismissed the Portsmouth (actually Portsea) based person. By going through the images page by page, on page 9 of 11, his next of kin showed his marriage details, births of 3 children(my wife's mother being one of the 3) and their address. This really was hitting the jackpot with so much information. Even going through the images was not encouraging until that page because of the regiments named; Suffolk,Royal Garrison,Royal Warwickshire whereas I'd anticipated, Cheshire/Lancashire/Manchester regiments.

Because his parents were also named this obviously led me to census records of the families including 1939 Register, so much family history from browsing a military record.

BTW he survived WW1 but did not quite make the 1939 Register.

 

While it doesn't turn out to be the case in this search for the real John Morley much confusion about soldier's real ages is quite common. It can be traced particularly among Canadian records simply because they are more complete. Where there was going to be a period of training before they were sent into the field it seemed fairly common to ship the boys out at 17. My on line friend at Lives has over 300 underage boys in a community already

 

In my elusive search for a John Morley Enlistment in WW1 I came across two Morley's who gave the age 17 at Enlistment - one of whom (the subject of an earlier posting) had all the right qualifications of area and Regiment- and declared himself to be 17 years and 264 days. You cannot be more precise than that and the calculated year from enlistment date would have been bang on as well. He was duly Enrolled (Enlisted crossed out) and learning (via a posting from Heather) that one could view further pages of the Enlistment Record, I sadly discovered he had been discharged to 'Home' about 14 days later for having given a falsified age, as they had obtained his Birth Certificate. ( I believe he had added a year).

Out of curiosity I checked on the second one, who although not really a front runner was still a possibility, only to discover he too had been discharged as 'falsifying age. I would imagine that if they had both been 'reasonably' close to 18 they may well have got through, but 16 going on 17 seemed to be a non-starter.

 

Well, in my Dad's case 16 going on 17 was very much a starter (and an ender). He enlisted on 3 September 1914, one week before his 17th birthday (10 September 1914), and did retire from the army until almost exactly 34 years later, on 5 August 1948.

 

Well they do so there is always the exception that proves the rule!

Which reminds Gillian, I recently used FBMD quite extensively having become frustrated with FMP not allowing me to combine Cheshire & Lancashire, and Ancestry - although not nearly so 'picky'- was annoying in other ways. So I turned to the old faithful FBMD. I'm glad I did as some of the searches were fruitful. I kept noticing that often the abbreviated name of the Transcriber was "Gill C" (or perhaps another initial can't be certain). I recall way back you mentioned you did a transcribing spell (I don't know how long or short) for FBMD and wonder if I found one that you had transcribed. Just a thought!

 

No that wasn't me, Bob. I was simply gillian with a small g. I've kept some of my correspondence with my "syndicate coordinator", which tells me that I was transcribing from 2007 to 2010.

 

I know exactly that problem, recently working on a family that moved between Chester, Birkenhead, Liverpool, Holywell and Wrexham, so 5 towns, 4 counties and 2 countries. FreeBMD got me a flying start back to 1837, the new GRO search helped with mothers names and linked to early marriages which were on FMP.

 

I have long standing 'beefs' with researching on both FMP & Ancestry and have learned each of its weaknesses over time. With FMP (as Peter often reiterates) less is more, but that does little to sooth me even though I know it to be true. If your county entry differs by so much as a whisker -and forget entirely about providing multiple counties - you are DOOMED to get a NUL result. This is, I believe, called Boolean logic so something is either TRUE or FALSE. Of course if you omit the location you then have to search the entire country, or it certainly seems so.

But good old FBMD permits multiple county selections for its searches, and Ancestry using 'Fuzzy Logic' permits you to extend your search to adjacent counties and often beyond. To be balanced on the matter FMP scores over Ancestry in other areas -and of course there is always its 1939 Register - but its inherent weakness can best be described as 'LOCATION- LOCATION-LOCATION'.