Unravelling the National Roll

[mahonec]

Has anyone else tried to interrogate the National Roll of the Great War which can be found on the Ancestry UK site? It seems that whatever name I put in comes up with literally hundreds of references, but the name concerned is not on any of the pages listed. Since the roll is presumably alphabetical, by area, how can it be so difficult to go to the relevant pages for the name you want?

Is there some trick to entering the right search terms?

Can you tell a family history researcher by how little hair they have left?!

Chris

[John_Hartley]

I don't normally use Ancestry to access the Roll but have just tried.

No problem as far as I'm concerned. I entered "Hartley" as the surname and "Manchester" in keyword and up came the entries that I knew were there in the Manchester edition.

John

[Stebie9173]

To your last question - Yes..... and if you see me you'll know what I mean!

To your first two questions - the National Roll has nowhere near every soldier who served in WW1, and indeed has many people on it who were not in the armed forces (nurses, munition workers, etc.) The entries were paid for by the person to whom they related, or their friends and family, and were provided in full by the person paying for them. As such, short of claiming that you had won five VCs, you could put in what you liked with little likelihood of it being checked. As such most researchers start looking at the National Roll with a degree of sceptism.

Steve.

[mahonec]

To your last question - Yes..... and if you see me you'll know what I mean!

To your first two questions - the National Roll has nowhere near every soldier who served in WW1, and indeed has many people on it who were not in the armed forces (nurses, munition workers, etc.) The entries were paid for by the person to whom they related, or their friends and family, and were provided in full by the person paying for them. As such, short of claiming that you had won five VCs, you could put in what you liked with little likelihood of it being checked. As such most researchers start looking at the National Roll with a degree of sceptism.

Steve.

Fair enough - cant imagine either grandad paying out good money to blow their own trumpet about something they saw as being very ordinary. I suspect they won't be there and therefore will not waste any more time trawling through the pages. Your advice has been very helpful, thanks.

Chris