Boxley Parish Kent WWI Project

[Tracey Winter-Biggs]

If it is of interest to anyone, I have set up a Facebook page for:  Boxley War Memorial (Kent, UK)
It's set as a public group but you have to send a request to join.

Over the past five years I've been researching Boxley Parish during WWI, initially to find out about the men commemorated on the War Memorial. This rapidly led to uncovering a wider story about the people of Boxley Parish which included part of Aylesford, Sandling, Penenden Heath, Boxley, Gidds Pond, Vinters & Turkey Mill.

For anyone that subscribes to 'Ancestry', I've set up a Family Tree for each of the people I have found,  'Boxley War Memorial Kent & Associated Others', which gives access to lots of documents and photographs.

 

There are all sorts of people recorded from the ladies of the parish to those awarded gallantry medals.

Elvy Wicks was in the VAD 'very willing when available'.

On the 1911 Census he was a Fitter, Electrical Mechanical, he later founded the Maidstone Horny & Meccano Club which then developed into Maidstone Model Engineering Society (model railway at Mote Park).

Sir Garrard Tyrwhitt Drake who owned Maidstone Zoo (Sandling).

He served with the Royal Army Veterinary Corps in the UK, there is a section in his book 'My Life With Animals' where I finally found what he had done while in the Army.

John Poole who pinched a ham, (yes, a whole ham) from a teashop in Ireland just before the War, later KIA at Ypres.

We have one who frankly was a rather naughty Romeo, with one family in Maidstone & another in London,

he apparently would never attend weddings! 

Essentially though, everyone did their best.

 

The project is still ongoing but it's more or less ready for people to access in the run up to the commemorations later this year, the 'Ancestry' page is the MASTER for most people & documents.

 

Feedback welcome, I'm not techie or professional just interested in trying to co-ordinate an on-going record of their lives.