Greetings from Pompey

[keithmroberts]

Hi, I'm a sort of interloper, with a particular interest in the Great War.

I have researched many service personnel from a village that is now part of my home town Bradford, and am currently involved in a project researching about 1000 men on a street list Great War memorial in my adopted home, Portsmouth. 85% of these men survived the war so identifying them on a memorial produced in about 1925 is sometimes decidedly challenging.

The result is that apart from the military genealogy, which I am reasonably effective at, I have to do some general family history work as well. Fortunately I am retired, as I am one of six volunteers who maintain the Great War Forum , which now has 1.95 million posts on Great War topics. We are also transcribing the 1918 Electoral Register for the city ward that included the 1200 homes that the street list covers.

[christanel]

Hello Keith and welcome to the Brit-Gen forums.
An interloper? Never! Anyone seriously interested in any aspect of genealogy is very welcome at Brit-Gen. I see you are finding your way around the forums just fine too.
Reading your activities shows you have your retirement time well and truly sorted.
If you need help with any aspect of your research our members are ready and waiting.

Christina

[Lesley Robertson]

Welcome in, Keith. As Chris says, researchers of any aspect are welcome!

I've spent some time researching the men on much smaller memorials for my one place study and found several pitfalls because the info on the memorials was mostly based on info from family. In my small group were twins who'd never been near the village but whose parents had moved there after the War and a man who had hated his forename and signed up under a different one (consequence - army records under one name and civilian records under the other - only sorted out when his GNephew emailed me to explain). Not included were a couple of men who had lived and worked in the village but whose families lived elsewhere so they were on other monuments.
Good luck with your bigger project!

[keithmroberts]

Thanks Leslie

All the pitfalls that you mention are sadly well known to me. The other significant problem is that this memorial, unlike others I ahve worked on, was quite late, being compiled in 1925 or 26, and relied to a degree on hearsay, apart from the evident errors which owe their origins to transcription from cursive script, possibly more than once.One example only The memorial has "CADLEY W Sh Corp HMS Hampshire" but there was no suck seaman. Eventually I settled on William George CADBY who went down with HMS Hampshire in 1916. There is only one link to the area, confirmed via the HMS Hampshire project, who had a local address at a different street for him. it is easy to see how the cursive script could be converted. it is likely the he and his wife took lodgings in the area so that they could be together when his shaip was in harbour. All other records tie the couple to her parents address in London.
The satisfaction when supporting evidence is found is truly great.

[thewideeyedowl]

Hi Keith

I research from afar so am not too sure about the location of the memorial/street you are researching for this project. However, I have a small amount of info on the three SQUIRES brothers who were killed within six months in 1917. (Can you imagine how truly dreadful that must have been for the poor parents?) They are:

Albert Thomas SQUIRES, Isle of Wight Rifles/8th Btn Hampshire Regiment, KIA Sheikh Abbas, Gaza, Southern Palestine, 19 April 1917 ("my man"); Jerusalem memorial, Portsmouth Memorial, and two memorials on IW.

Harry Reeves SQUIRES MM, died of wounds in late August 1917; the only one to have been 'bury-able' and thus have a headstone; also on the Portsmouth Memorial.

Charlie SQUIRES KIA October 1917, in one of the later encounters that are known as Passchendaele; commemorated on Memorial in France and on the Portsmouth Memorial.

(Forgive me for not having checked the details of the two younger ones before posting.)

They were three of the sons of John and Ellen SQUIRES of Portsea. You can find them all on CWGC.

Have you come across this family in your researches?

Owl

PS I have had some very useful help from the Great War Forum over the last few years. A big THANK YOU to you and the other volunteers who maintain it.

[keithmroberts]

The three Squires bothers came from Hale Street, Landport, Portsmouth, not very far from the area on which our research is focussed. They are all listed in "The National Roll of the Great War" section X, Portsmouth, which is digitised by either Ancestry or FMP.

They don't feature in our research which is focussed on two memorials in St Wilfrid's George Street, which was a mission church covering just 21 streets, comprising 1276 dwellings. The street list names 993 men who served, while the second memorial listing men who died, mostly overlaps, but not completely. The worst day of the war for Portsmouth was of course 31 May 1916, and 31 men from the mission parish are recorded as Jutland casualties.

St Wilfrid's was part of the Portsea Parish, a pretty high powered Anglican church with several mission churches attached. Two of the vicars became Archbishops, one. Cyril Garbett who was responsible for the construction of St Wilfrid's, only of York, while his predecessor but one served in turn at York and Canterbury. The November 1918 parish magazine lists 10 of the Portsea Parish curates serving as padres with the armed forces, three of whom, including Tubby Clayton founder of Toc H, were awarded the Military Cross. Some who had served pre-war as curates also took to war service as padres, at least one being wounded and losing the use of an arm, while more than one eventually became bishops.

I am not a member of that or any other church, but the history is fascinating. The parent church, St Mary's Portsea when it was rebuilt, for I think, the 3rd time, was largely funded by W H Smith then First Lord of the Admiralty, and the foundation stone was laid jointly by Queen Victoria and her daughter, who was the Princess Royal, and the Crown Princess of Prussia, mother of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

A one year project, even extended by a few months has not been enough.