help with finding a soldier

[emma789]

i was wondering if anyone could help me in reasearching a man who was my great grans lodger. i have what i believe to be a swagger stick which i have been told was his. i have attached a photo. it has the middlesex regiment badge on the side and has been engraved w cowan, staff armourer, A.O.C on the top.

i am not sure wether it is best to try searching for middlesex reg or AOC in the medal cards on the national archives site and i have not been able to find any files on ancestry that match both.

is there anywhere else that will hold records? what rank would a staff armourer be listed as? and would the stick have been issued with the engraving on? i am confused by the fact that there is AOC and middlesex reg together.

sorry for the silly questions, im new to this!

[madtaffy]

Hi

not to sure if this helps or makes things worse

there is 1 man in the middlesex that matches, but no W COWAN in the AOC, there are 2 COWAN's that were ARMR's

all infantry batt had a ARMR with them, it was thier job to repair and look after the weapons, rifles, pistols, lewis guns

so yes your man was AOC, and attched to the Middlesex Regt, BUT IF HE DID NOT GO OVER SEAS HE WILL NOT HAVE A MIC, because he has no medals

i can not find any other COWAN to the AOC, could you double check the first name please just to make sure

Ian

[KevinBattle]

Do the hallmarks add any useful info?

[emma789]

thankyou for the replys,

madtaffy: the name could be W cowap but the line of the P doesnt match with the rest of the engraving, it is much deeper than the rest of the letters and i believe it to be a scratch. plus i have searched for w cowap and could only find 1 man who served in 9th N Lanc.

my mum was told his name was jack cowan.

If he didnt go over seas is there any other way of tracing him, i havent had much luck with the service or pension records either.

kevinW4: the hallmarks show that it was made in birmingham and the date stamp is 1897. i cant make out the makers mark.

[andiS]

the hallmarks show that it was made in birmingham and the date stamp is 1897. i cant make out the makers mark.

Could be something he acquired right at the end of his service then? So he was out of the army by the war? At any rate, unless it was handed down to him, it implies that he might have been older and so was on home duties during the war?

[madtaffy]

Hi

there is only 1 J Cowan AOC thats a ARMR, but his name is James

Iab

[emma789]

thankyou for the all the help,

i am presuming that the stick must have came from before ww1 due to the hallmark. so was probably handed down to the man who i am looking for. so it could be any of the j cowans that served in ww1. unfortunatly i dont know where he lived before the war, only where he ended up after it.

i was told he served with my great grandad whose pension record i have managed to find, i can only read one of the regiments on there though and that is (i believe) royal warks.

some more digging is needed from family members i think to see if anyone can come up with his first name or where he was originally from, he was known as jack but that might not of been his 'real' first name.