GTAR Projects: War memorial research

I spent part of Summer 2014 tracing details of some of the forces personnel named on war memorials in Bracebridge, Bracebridge Heath, and Lincoln St Andrew's parish, Lincoln UK. Various people have studied the memorials in the past, and the information compiled gives some background as to the casualty, their military record and their family. In preparation for 2014 commemorations of WWI, Lincs County Council had a project coordinating volunteers researching memorials across the county, and producing a comprehensive database of the named individuals.

Bracebridge Heath war memorial (G. Tann)

In a separate exercise, Ward Councillors in part of Lincoln wished to find details for names which remained obscure, partly with the aim of informing local school children about where the army, navy and airforce casualties had lived in their locality. I agreed to help track down information for as many as possible of about 40 names which seemed to have eluded researchers.

This type of research is becoming ever-easier as the various genealogical, historic newspapers and military-related websites upload more and more information - I had access to the 1911 England Census online, which was not available when another researcher was working in 2006.

Using my experience of finding relevant needles of information from within the international online haystack, I started by discovering that some of the names had already been successfully researched but the results had not been fully integrated. Other names (mostly soldiers from both World Wars) could be linked by amalgamating records posted by the War Graves Commission with genealogical resources. This left a smaller group of much more difficult individuals where detective work demonstrated that either the memorial name differed from other accessible records for that individual, or that the local connection was indirect and had not been identified before.

I'm still trying to solve 6 names - some I think I have explained but the facts to demonstrate that I've linked the correct people remain absent. I still hope to resolve these.

This work has been fascinating and I would be delighted to consider commissions to research names from elsewhere. Please email Geoff.tann@gmail.com with your enquiry.