WW1 Service Records O-Z

Not before time, Ancestry has released the remaining 'Burnt Documents' and these are now searchable - after a struggle - on the Ancestry site. It's a pity, having waited so long for these, that Ancestry seems to have completely messed up the search function. Type the first name and surname in the relevant boxes and you'll just as likely get no results. Type the same names in the keywords boxes and the results appear.

Similarly, it's no use typing in the regiment (in the regiment box) and the name (in the keywords box) at the same time. That will also get you no results. Type the names first, wait for the results, and then narrow down by regiment. The information is there, it's just that Ancestry has messed up the search.

In any event, apart from finding my great grandfather's service records, I've also had a quick look at some of Chailey's men and found records for the following:

John Peckham
Francis George Pettet
Albert Still

There may be others, but in the meantime, I'll be updating these men's pages as and when.

Service Records I-N

I see that Ancestry.co.uk has made more of the WW1 service records available on line. To my mind, Ancestry provides an excellent service and I shudder to think how many hours I spent trudging up to the National Archives in London; hours which are now spent tapping out names in the search boxes on Ancestry's website.

What this means for my Chailey site - all being well - is that I'll find more service records for Chailey men, and when I do, I'll update their pages on the website. Watch this space.

My great uncle's service record is also now easily accessible. John Frederick Nixon (Jack, to his family) was my grandfather's elder brother and was killed in action in October 1918. He is commemorated on the Vis-en-Artois memorial in France.

Ancestry.co.uk

I've added some links to Ancestry.co.uk on the site. To be honest, I'll get some revenue if people click through and subscribe but apart from that, I think that Ancestry provide an excellent service. Living 5000 miles away from the Public Record office, my research would have been greatly hampered had it not been for the ease of access to archives on line.

When I first started researching Chailey, there was barely any on-line resource available. Indeed, I'm pretty sure the term "on-line" had not even been coined. I still remember, a little later, making several trips from Essex to Kew to go through medal index cards - and that was just for the wounded soldiers at Hickwells and Beechlands. I hadn't even begun to contemplate the 370 odd parishioners who served their country.

Today, medal index cards, service records from WO363 and WO364, not to mention census returns for the years 1841 to 1901 and birth / marriage / death information are all available on Ancestry for around seventy pounds a year. Naval service records, officer records and war diaries, to say nothing of Royal Naval Division service records can all be accessed via the National Archives' site. For somebody like me who has researched well over five hundred people and had access to all the above archives and more, a subscription to Ancestry is not just a luxury, it's an essential.

Anyway, that's enough plugging for Ancestry. If you go to the soldier pages now, you'll see that those men for whom service records exist, have that fact noted against their names (well, names A-L currently but the others will follow). Click on that name and once you're in their biography on my site, you'll be able to access their service record directly - terms and conditions applying of course.

Folow the Chailey's Men A-D link here to see what I mean.

Medal cards on-line

I noticed today that Ancestry have put the WW1 medal cards on-line. This will be an enormous boon to WW1 researchers not only because the information becomes far more easily accessible, searchable and ultimately cheaper than the information you get direct from the National Archives, but also because the Ancestry photographer has helpfully taken a shot of the back of the card as well. In most instances the back will be blank, but some, like the attached card for my great uncle, Alfred Arthur Nixon, show an address and details of correspondence.

All images are Crown copyright of course, but as this is a non commercial blog and this post is written with the intention of informing and educating, I hope HM will forgive me and not send me to the Tower on this occasion.