Letter home

Police Report

Pension Record

Industrial School

School Annual Report

1879 Karachi Burial

Fossil digger 1871

Our Research: This project necessitated meticulous genealogical research over several months as the common family surnames Evans, Taylor and Smith were all involved.

After locating the right Smiths, Taylors and Evanses, we set about looking for record of them in the First World War, as we knew that several of their number had fought in the conflict. We managed not only to uncover extensive documentation on all of them, but for one ancestor we actually found the regimental war diary on the very day he was wounded. We worked out the exact spot near Ypres in Belgium where this happened and quite literally retraced his footsteps. Other documents unearthed, such as pension records, letters home from the British Expeditionary Force and police documents, culminated in solving the mystery of why and when the client’s great grandfather had changed his name.

Another ancestor was in the 66th Regiment of Foot in the 1800s and at the National Archives there was record of him in the original handwritten Muster and Pay Lists documents from the regiment. This gave precise details of his physical description, of the day he enlisted as a Private in 1853 and where he served over the years. He then disappeared from the records and was last known as being stationed in India, so the search switched to the Old India Office at the British Library, where we examined the burial registers of those in service in India, and found a record of his burial in Karachi in 1879.

One family branch all worked for the North Eastern Railway and were all found on census returns, but by locating their pension records, we were able to build up a far more detailed picture of where exactly they worked and even how much they were paid. Their lives mirrored perfectly the bigger picture of railway expansion in the North of England at that time. A tombstone for a relative showed that he had drowned in 1881 and wanting to know more about his tragic demise, we scoured through local newspapers of the time and located an eye-witness account of how he fell into a river when a major bridge collapsed. Our client was fascinated to be able to visit the scene and read the moving account in situ.

Interesting revelations were discovered regarding other family members on census returns. One ancestor was listed as being a pupil at an Industrial school in Liverpool in 1901. We located visual material and detailed accounts of the school in the local archives. Several Annual Reports painted a grim picture of conditions at the school - from the strict timetables of work, prayer and study to the poor diet and the rate of child mortality. Our client realised that the ‘war’ scars on his ancestor’s back were caused from a severe beating as a child rather than from life in the trenches.

The most surprising profession on the family tree was a Fossil Digger in the 1800s. We discovered some incredible historical documentation on fossil digging in Cambridgeshire (comparing it to the US ‘Gold Rush’), and tracked down the country's top expert on the phenomenon. He took us on an extensive tour of the area and our client even dug up actual ‘fossils’ in the very places his great grandfather would have done 150 years earlier!

Places visited: York, Ingelby Arncliffe in Yorkshire, Romaldkirk, Lartington, Bowes, Barnard Castle in County Durham, Cambridge, Meldreth, Barrington in Cambridgeshire, Lille in France, Ypres in Belgium, the National Archives, London and the South London area.

Luxury Hotels stayed at:
Crathorne Hotel in North Yorkshire
Hilton Doubletree Hotel in Cambridge
Carlton Hotel in Lille, France
Hilton Hotel in London

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