Ancestry UK

[Emmakhamilton]

Hi there

I am trying to locate the WW1 service and pension records (if they still exist) for my Great Grandfather Ernest Bertie Robinson, a Corporal in the ASC (S4/093330 - from his MIC, or T4/093330 -from the Absent Voters List for Kensington 1918).

Unfortunately, no Ernest Bertie or Ernest B. or E. B. Robinson exists in Ancestry UK's WW1 military on-line records.

I've tried searching under both regimental numbers but get "your search returned no records". Does anyone know if the regimental number search facility actually works on Ancestry UK's military records site? If it does, then the "your search returned no records" points to the records either no longer existing or not yet having been placed on-line. If it doesn't work, however, then I have a long slog ahead of me as there are quite a few Ernest or E. Robinson's listed in Ancestry UK's on-line WW1 military records that might (and might not) be my man!

Cheers Emma

[Northern Soul]

You won't find a Service Record for him as only surnames beginning with A-C have been put on line: the others are due in the future.

There don't appear to be any Pension Records to him.

Andy.

[tootrock]

I just tried the following on the Ancestry Military Pensions section.

Enter any name e.g. John Smith into search engine.

Select one of these at random, and find his regimental number.

Now search for the same man using just the regimental number.

This convinced me that the system works. Also works for Soldiers records.

Regards,

Martin

[Chris_Baker]

... but not if he had two or more different regimental numbers and you don't know the first one

[shinglma]

The search facility is fine...

... its the indexing that is a problem.

Aside from spelling errors in place and person names and incorrect dates of birth, there is the problem of multi-indexed records. There is also the problem that the regimental number indexed is only one of a number that a soldier might have held over the course of his career. Quite often the number they have indexed is not the one that he served with in WW1 but from an earlier spell with the Army.

Regards

Mike S

[Emmakhamilton]

Thanks for making things clearer.

Cheers Emma

[6th Shropshires]

An other thing about Ancestry is that some of the men's pages are in two different places, today I found one of the my men I was looking for (searching by number) but there was only one page, I decided to look gain but under his name, and again I found just the one page, then decided to look at a men of the same name and then looked two or three pages back and found the rest of my chaps pages, these pages were some several hundred pages away from the first page I originally found (hope that make sense ), this as happoned to me several times where I have been lucky and found scattered records but there have been many more times when I have only found the one page and not been able to locate the rest of the mans pages.

Annette

[delta]

Ancestry's search engine is certainly a mixed blessing - have found another five of "my" tankees recently, inclduing a driver, but they seem to be like London buses....

Stephen