ELECTORAL REGISTERS 1914, 1915 AND 1918

[keithmroberts]

A monthly list - that vicar was a star, and someone preserved  the magazines. Those are a tremendous bonus.  The focus of my project was on just over a thousand names, mostly survivors, the majority naval, from21 streets about 1200 houses, but with additional names from people associated with that parish but not resident in it. We have a notebook used for intercession in some services, probably put started by 1915, but with part clearly much later.  The memorials with the bulk of the names were not completed until late 1925 or the first half of 1926 and although some casualties had been listed both in the small intercession notebook, and in a register of communicants, so many names were volunteered by active aprishioners so long after the fact, so we had some impossible searches, some info just plain wrong, and much inadequate.  By the official end of the project we had confidently identified close to 800 od the total, just under 80% and I doubt that we will ever confirm many more.

 

Now however I have found extra men killed by reverse searches on CWGC for every obvious address  option, but some of these might of course be men whose surviving relatives were not fixed in the area - that work is still under way, and there are many new names totally unresearched at present in the spring 1918 register. I think I have work for another couple of years.

 

Keith

[Guest]

KR- Yes, it was fortuitous- but balanced out by the main local memorial being made of the wrong type of stone. The architect, Newbury Abbot Trent, was good at the "avenging angel" metalwork-but,als, picked a rogue block of Portland stone-which stained and eroded even ebfore the memorial was opened- And ,of course, there is no trace of a full listing anywhere. Heads you win...

 

        Have you looked at the church records, as deposited in local record offices????  They have helped me out on some things as all sorts of ifs and buts were kept. 

 

Parish mags. are a problem- With the usual mix of story/homily and then a supplement of specific local news, they were mostly done to a standard formula (Church Publishing Company??)  I wonder sometimes if there is any mileage in trying to track down whether the publishers/printers  possibly kept a file set of the local stuff. Not at Lambeth for sure-I know the Librarian there. 

[keithmroberts]

I have copied all the surviving Portsea Parish  records and with permission included them on our end of project DVD..  Having said that, I ahve recently become aware of a wonderful new source that I might eventually be allowed to access. A lady involved in the family History Society has 20 copies, mostly wartime of the Nutshell, a magazine edited by one P B Clayton for the boys club at the parent church as well as a large number of identified photographs from the same club.. I'm trying to persuade her that we should be allowed to copy them digitally and make the digital copies available freely and that the originals would be best preserved in the local archives.

I may not win as there is a possibility that the society in question might see them as a source of income and release them only as a chargeable item, or worse still, just hang onto them.  I think they are probably unique. So far  I can't find any archive that has any copies at all.

 

Keith

[Phil Wood]

Splendid name 'Newbury Abbott Trent' they should have got him to do the Newbury memorial!

 

I have a list of men in service from early 1916 - the result of the compilation of an Active Service Roll covering the town and many local villages.  I guess it was part of the campaign to get men to enlist - it stopped once conscription got going. I have also gone through the 1918 electoral roll to compile a list of the NM electors (there is no 1918 Absent Voters List).

 

The parish magazine is of very limited use - occasional items about men serving, but not attempt to list them all. The concept of doing what you two are doing is beyond the call of duty!  There were over 1200 serving by the end of 1915, 1700 in the electoral roll - 250+ dead by then - so a total of around 2000.

 

P B Clayton?  The P B Clayton? Wasn't he in Belgium for most of the war.