Trying to find regiment location

[Peter Goodey]

Search under "Britain"..."Military, armed forces etc" using the name Leonard Lewis WATERS. Nothing else. There are two relevant records. There are several pages in each record.

You should be able to save the images to a memory stick (at least, Kent Libraries allow you to do that, I don't know about Essex)

[helachau]

mand82 - thanks for confirming my earlier findings re. two records I found under the skeleton search "2040" and "5th bn royal fusiliers". I didn't expand on the details found since you hadn't offered any details whatsoever about the individual involved. Whatever it might say on the docs. themselves the FMP transcription states "5th bn royal fusiliers" only.

Good luck with the search

[mand82]

I finally managed to access the image at my local library there was only one record with three images showing him joining up and saying his fit to join and stamped Hounslow , and what looked to be saying he was in training for 49 days most of the handwriting on the third page was hard to read, but doesn’t really seem to say what part of the uk he was sent to , it’s all confusing to me

[Peter Goodey]

If you search exactly as I described in message #11 above (no soldier number, no regiment name) and make sure the sort order is set to "Relevance", you should get a number of records of which the first two are relevant.

The one you're looking at is the least interesting. It relates to his period in the militia which lasted all of two months! Why do you think he was sent somewhere? The local drill hall is the likeliest place.

The 3rd page says

To: Royal Fusiliers 28th 10. 01
(signed) Capt(ain)
Adj(utan)t 7th B(attalio)n Royal Fusiliers

The second record, which you have yet to find. is more interesting and lists his postings including Egypt, Bermuda and South Africa.

I don't know why you didn't find it in the library because I wasn't looking over your shoulder. Searching on just the full name should do the trick.

[Peter Goodey]

PS I tried opening a private window so that FMP wouldn't know I was a member and tried a general search for Leonard Lewis Waters. Those two army records were top of the list.


Try it from home before you set out for the library again. It's free to search!

[mand82]

On Findmypast only one record came up when I did a search with his name and date of birth and birth town
Ancestry didn’t seem to be showing up any relevant records as I checked them and they was totally different person to the Findmypast record which is the correct one but I will look again on ancestry

[Peter Goodey]

The records you want are on Findmypast not on Ancestry.

I did say enter only his full name. Please try again. Do not enter a date of birth. Do not enter a place of birth. Do not enter anything except his full name.

Beginners often think that the more information they enter in a search form, the better.

The best approach is almost always to enter the minimum amount of information and then fill in additional fields if the search returns an unmanageable number of records.

Please try again on Findmypast.

[mand82]

I did find another record on ancestry with his birth date & town but the library’s computer was using a old version of internet explorer & it said to view the record properly the browser needed to be updated as it wasn’t supported all I could see was the record blurred and couldn’t download it 😞 will have to try Findmypast again tomorrow as I only get a hour a day on the library’s computer

[Peter Goodey]

What you found on Ancestry won't be on Ancestry as such but on their expensive premium subsidiary company. I can't imagine that the library subscribe to that.

Stick to Findmypast for these particular records which are from National Archives series WO96 (militia) and WO97 (service records).

When the National Archives invited bids to computerise these series, Findmypast won the contract. If you look at the National Archives catalogue for these series, you'll see that they provide a link to Findmypast.

[mand82]

The ancestry one was using a site called fold3 or something but said it was by ancestry and said you needed explorer edge, chrome etc but they had a old explorer seems my library doesn’t like to update their computers, I will try your advice with Findmypast when I go back to the library, I took my usb pen in and downloaded the other record onto it so just gotta do the same with the other 😊