Who was Robert Pawley?

[Caluna]

St Andrew's Church at Sudbury, Middlesex (London Borough of Brent) currently has a project adding details to the names on its WW1 memorial. One - Robert Pawley -has so far defeated all attempts to identify him either in a wide variety of war records or in BMD records and censuses. Name variants and wildcards have been used in searches. A Pawley one-name study has been contacted but no reply has been received as yet. The only major source which has not yet been tried is local newspapers, which will take a long time to trawl through as Robert's death could have taken place at any time during the war. No parish magazines exist for that period. A number of people named Robert Pawley appear in war records, but there is nothing to link any of them with Sudbury. The situation is complicated by the fact that parish and local government boundaries have changed several times in that area, and that a lot of people were moving there just before WW1 as a lot of new housing was being built. Any suggestions for what to do next would be gratefully welcomed.

[Megan Roberts]

There are two possible entries on the Commonwealth War Graves site:

https://www.cwgc.org/find/find-war-d...e=pawley&war=1

They are both under initials. Don't discount either the regiment name or the location, because soldiers were moved around to fill in gaps when regiments were decimated.

I would suggest that you check out these two to see if either of these could be your man.

[Caluna]

Thank you, Megan. I did manage to find out who one of those was, and he wasn't the one we're looking for. The other one could be, but I haven't found any evidence for a connection with Sudbury

[Lesley Robertson]

An additional problem is that soldiers didn’t always join up under their whole name (or even their correct name) There’s one in my one place study who defied all efforts to identify him until someone contacted me and said that his Great Uncle hated his forename and had joined up u der the name in the medals index, not the one on his birth 1911 census for him, and for others who might be his relatives. Another problem for my ops was 2 brothers with a distinctive name which had not been seen in the parish pre-war. Then I got hold of a record for farm owners just after the war, and there the parents were. Their sons had never been to. The area, but the parents wanted them on a memorial near them.

It might be worth having a broad look at the whole country for that name at a suitable age.....

[marshland]

After the end of the Great War a lot of effort went into the establishment of fitting memorials to the men that were lost. As is often the case with this sort of thing the Government only caught up with the strong public sentiment several years later and so small committees were established up and down the land that raised funds ,designed their local memorial and then gathered the names in, buily the memorial and dedicated it.
As the Govt was not involved there was no official process, no rules for inclusion and no official access to service records so each memorial was as good as the knowledge of those in the community as to who had been lost and whether their memorial was the best place to display their names. As a consequence many names were left off the list, Many names are on several memorials, some were added (esp if they were connected to one of the main donors or committee members) and importantly many names are spelt slightly wrong as by 1918 literacy had improved but was still not at a high level and often names were reported verbally via several people hence Porlie could easily became Pawley and Frederick Pawley nicknamed Rick could become R Pawley.
As they were handling donated money most of the committees elected officials and held minuted meetings where things were discussed, some of which included the names and references.
Sadly a lot of these records have been lost over the years but some still remain so I think it is worth your checking your own Church Meeting Records for 1918 - 1920 and if they are not still retained at the Church they will have either been destroyed or passed to the London Metropolitan Archive so I think that an enquiry there may be useful ( If you haven't already done so).