When I was mapping out the functionality of the British Army Ancestors website, I was very clear about one thing: the search functionality had to be both flexible and fast. I believe I have achieved both ends. Fundamental to the flexibility of the site was the ability to use wildcard searching. When it works well […]
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Don’t assume that if there are no surviving army records for your British Army Ancestor, that all is lost. Nothing could be further from the truth. The man on the left of this photo is 5480 Rifleman J E Deakin, a keen athlete and a successful one at that. The photograph appeared in the Rifle […]
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Finding a photo of your soldier ancestor may sound like an impossible task but you can certainly improve your chances of success. One thing is sure: our soldier ancestors were not shy of the camera. I can almost guarantee that at whatever point in time you may have happened upon this article, you will find […]
Read more...Earlier this year, I published the 100,000th British Army photo on British Army Ancestors. There are now over 101,000 photos of British soldiers covering the period 1850 to 1947; that’s close to 100 years of history. From its modest launch in 2017, British Army Ancestors has quickly grown to be the number one resource for […]
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This superb photograph of men of the 1st Battalion, Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) was taken when the battalion was stationed at Portsmouth in 1894. It is of interest to me for two reasons: The men are all named and as a result of this I have been able to match up 10 of the names to […]
Read more...Alexander Harvey, Frederick Brown and Robert Pitman were all remembered by me last week on the British Army Ancestors Facebook page. William and Robert were family men who died serving their King and Country during the First World War. Frederick served during the Second World War and he survived but never spoke about his time […]
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On the 21st July 1917, a year and a day after the 20th (Public Schools) Battalion, Royal Fusiliers had been badly mauled at High Wood, a small band of survivors sat down for lunch. The men were eating at the Grand Hotel, Dover; a fairly grand meal for wartime of boiled Scotch salmon, roast lamb […]
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Richard Deane, or Richard John Deane to give him his full name, was born in Fleetwood, Lancashire on 19th May 1898. He was the son of Richard Woodforde Deane of Bedford and Harriet Deane (nee Blencowe) of Chailey. The 1901 census records the Deane family living at 145 Canterbury Road, Gillingham, Kent. His father, a […]
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This photo of Siegfried Sassoon and fellow officers was acquired by British Army Ancestors last year. What it shows is British army officers photographed at the end of a month-long training course at the Fourth Army School at Flixécourt on the Somme in 1916. The photo dates to May 1916 and within six weeks seven of […]
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These men are from Saltley College Guard and they posed for this photograph in 1907. Saltley Church of England College was a college for teacher training and was latterly known as St Peter’s College. Originally the Worcester, Lichfield & Hereford Diocesan Training College, it was built in open countryside in 1852 around a quadrangle in the […]
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