CROSBY William Murray 1895-1977 WW1 service

 I asked my mum and some of her brothers about my Granddad's World War One service. He had volunteered in 1914 at the beginning of the war, and was not in long owing to being exposed to gas and getting sick.

He had talked a little about his time in the war, telling how he rode a bicycle in the signals. He was a despatch rider carrying messages before the phones were set up for communication.

He had told how he jumped into a shell hole for protection and was affected by the gas lying in the bottom of it.

Knowing this, I set out to find any documents relating to his service.

I used the subscription website Ancestry.co.uk for my searches. I started with the Medal index cards as they are the most comprehensive set of records. They are held at TNA (The National Archives) in Kew, England. I searched for the name William Crosby with a keyword of Northumberland, as he lived in Newcastle upon Tyne.

There were 4 records, with service numbers 23/624; 18/890; 10470; 12449. With a bit more searching I also found a record for William Crosbie 5019. These all served with the Northumberland Fusiliers.

I then searched the service and pension records using name search and then service number search for all 5 soldiers found on the medal rolls cards. Only about 40% of these records remain, as many were destroyed in a fire in WW2, and I did not find any for William Crosby.

Looking more closely at the records I had found, I realized I could eliminate two of them, 18/890 and 23/1624, which had a “Z” on them, as this indicated that they served until the end of the war, so they definitely were not my Grandad.

I then turned to the records for the Silver War Badge. This was awarded to those who became ill or wounded. Wearing it would indicate to people that they had done their service.

The record for 5016 showed that the soldier had not served overseas, and that for 10470 he was discharged because of GSW (gun shot wound) and was 28 years old, so neither of these was the one I was looking for.

So number 12449 is likely to be my Grandad, William Murray CROSBY.

Private William Crosby enlisted on 28th September 1914 and arrived in France on 26th January 1915. 

From the War Unit Diary for 1st Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers,(available at TNA), I found that he is listed as sick on 14th April 1915. The unit was in Belgium in the Ypres area.

He was discharged later in the year on 16th August 1915.

Sunday Summary 6 Oct 2013 - Transcribing Audio and Scanning Photos

Mystery photo from circa 1890

I have been working on a couple of projects that are a result of a trip I took to England in May of this year.

One involves transcribing the conversations that I recorded of some of my uncles, to capture family stories and family information. It is a slow process, twenty minutes of typing needed for five minutes of recording. I am doing a little at a time.

The other project is to do with copies of photos given to me by my Dad’s family. They include his brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles and grandparents. Amongst them are a few mystery photos. One is of a young woman whose clothing puts the photo at around 1890, and another is of a young woman about 1905. I am sure there will be some detective fun trying to identify them.

I scanned the photos this week, so that I can send the printed copies to my Dad, but first I have to finish adding the names to the photos and to the scans.

Where did I get that? - Keeping records of searches.

In the early days of my search for my ancestors, I heard or read, more than once, how important it was to keep track of my sources, to write down where I found information.

As a beginner I thought it didn’t matter too much. After all, it was only for me, it wasn’t as if anyone else would be looking at it, and I would be all done in about a year, so what was the point?

Well, I was wrong. On many counts.

I did make some notes. Notes that I thought would be adequate for me to know where I got information from. Some were in a notebook, which I quickly realized was not going to work, as I needed to file the information in the ring binders that I had for each main line. I changed to loose sheets of A4 paper, noting all the names I found in a particular session on the same sheet. Which I also eventually realized was not working too well, as I then had to copy out that information to have it filed with the correct person. So then I learnt to have only one surname per page, and that worked much better.

I was also a bit casual about how I recorded the information for the source, or the sort of search I did; I just wanted to hurry on to hunting down the next ancestor, or the next bit of information. I really thought I would remember from my sometimes brief notes – I had no idea how much information I would accumulate; it turned out to be much more than my poor brain can handle.

I did not have any idea of how consumed I would be about my new interest, and how far and for how long I would want to pursue it (probably for the rest of my life). Almost four years on, and there are a number of times that I have not been able to work out from my notes just who and what I searched, and have had to go back and re-do some of the work.

So, write it down, and write it down clearly. I realize now that there is no place for short cuts. It is better to take the extra time to be thorough, than to go back to an ancestor or a family months later and not be able to work out what I did, and what I didn’t do. Re-doing work is no short cut.

What did that really say? Revisiting a transcription

In my time doing my family tree, I have had a number of documents that I have transcribed. Amongst them were copies of two letters written by my mum’s cousin to my cousin some years ago. I had taken care and tried to transcribe them just as they were.

Recently my mum was wondering about her cousins, who she had not had a lot of contact with, and whether they had any children.

I looked again at my transcription to see if there were any clues, and not only were there clues, my mum’s cousin had named her children and also those of her brother. I had typed a question mark next to the name of her brother’s wife. Wondering why I had done that, I revisited my copy of the original letter.

I had put a question mark because I couldn’t quite make out the name. Then I noticed that there were some numbers in brackets next to each of the children’s names that were not on the transcription at all. What were they? Only the ages of the children at the time the letter was written! When I did the transcription I had completely overlooked these numbers; I was looking for specific information, and was so focused on looking for anything about earlier generations that I skipped straight past those numbers.

That’s why it is a good idea to go back once in a while and revisit the information and documents we have gathered. Seen from a fresh perspective, we may pick up on details that did not seem significant at the time.