Apologies for Lack of Updates

My apologies to everyone for the recent radio silence. It's a combination of loosing my job of 20 years and starting a new Uni course. My researching time has been cut down to nothing between looking for work and studying. I am still working on the project but at a much slower pace. I will be finished my first round of study in about a month and should be able to resume regular posting then. In the meantime, you might like to check out this interesting post on the enlistment of the Welsh in Empire forces, including the A.I.F. The Welshmen...

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John William ROSE

John William ROSE is proving a bit of an exception to my usual problems. I can normally find alot of information about a persons early life and war service, and then strike problems with their post war life. However, John is the opposite!! I can't find anything about his life before he came to Australia. No birth record, nothing about his parents apart from names. Nothing about siblings, and nothing about how he got to Australia. Nothing about...

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Gwilym JONES - Identified

Part of my methodology when researching the service people for the book is to look at their lives before and after the war. This begins with looking at basic genealogical information, like parents and siblings. I do this partly to give a broader view of the persons life, to make their bio more than just "the War" but it also has a broader research side effect of finding other potential subjects for the book who may have otherwise slipped through...

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Geoffrey COWEN

My latest problem child is 398 Geoffrey COWEN. I have his early details from his life in Kensington, Liverpool, Lancashire, England. And I have details of his post war life in Stockton, NSW, Australia. My issue is how he got to Australia from England. I thought I'd found him working as firstly a deck boy, then a mess room steward on a number of regular passenger liners working between Liverpool and Sydney. However, it hit a problem when he is...

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Soldier Poster Project

As part of my project, I've made up a number of profile posters of soldiers whose lives I've already researched. On the poster is an abbreviated text of what will appear in the final book, as well as a photo of the soldier and any other information or images of interest. If the soldier died while serving, they have a poppy placed in the top left corner of their photo. At the bottom right corner is their battalion patch. If they served at...

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Thomas BELL - Munitions Worker

"MR. THOMAS BELL." Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate (NSW : 1876 - 1954) 17 Mar 1948: 4. Web. 24 Jun 2015 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article134321863> Thomas BELL was born in Jarrow, Durham, England in 1869, the son of Daniel BELL and Mary LEITCH. His father worked as a riveter in a local shipyard, as did his older brother Daniel. In 1889 he married Harriet Ann BOND, and they had three children, Harriet, Thomas Guy and Henry....

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Stanley Roy BAXTER

"DIVORCE COURT." The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954) 28 Apr 1915: 7. Web. 29 May 2015 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article15588289>. Stanley Roy BAXTER seems to have lived a quiet life after he returned to Australia from the war. But his early life was more problematic. His parents split when he was young. However, the nature of that split is proving difficult to determine. The article to the left would indicate that his mother...

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Robert Owen JONES - Identified

8074 Robert Owen JONES I'm working on a couple of a parallel WW1 projects at the moment. The other one is to identify 18 men in a photoframe. I've just managed to identify another person - Robert Owen JONES. He is the brother of the first person we were able to give a name to - Llewelyn JONES. Further details over at the Stockton Historical Society Inc blo...

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DALGLEISH, R. H - Unidentified

As a starting point for my research, I am using the list of names on the Stockton Soldiers' Memorial. This lists those from Stockton who served in World War One,  not just those who died. From a list of approx. 150 names, I currently have 27 names who I can't find any service records for. The likely reason for this is that they served in a force other than the A.I.F, such as the B.E.F or Merchant Marines. I searched for one R. H. DALGLEISH...

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Dr Robert DICK - Major, Royal Army Medical Corps

This is the first of my biographical posts for the blog. These posts won't go into huge amounts of detail, but are more about my research process and any tips and tricks I might come across. Dr Dick proved a little more difficult than the average soldier listed on the Stockton Soldiers' Memorial. Firstly, he is only called Dr Dick, not first name or initial. A quick search of Trove popped out the District Medical Officer for Newcastle and the Hunter...

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Welcome to Stockton and World War One

This blog will chronicle the work I'm doing on my book about the community of Stockton and World War One. The book will be in two parts. The first part will look at the impact of the war on the close knit community of Stockton and how the community responded to the massive disruption the war brought. The second part of the book will be biographies of the nearly 300 men and women who served in a variety of military roles during the war....

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