Finding Uncle Geordie

My maternal grandfather served in the Royal Navy during the First World War, and fortunately he survived. but one of his brothers was not so lucky. All I knew about him was that his name was George, he was in the army, and was killed during the First World War. I had already found his birth entry, on a visit to New Register House in the days before the ScotlandsPeople Centre. He was born 15 December 1893, only 20 months before my grandfather. On another research trip, this time to the Glasgow City Archives at the Mitchell Library, I found my widowed great-grandmother’s application for Poor Relief on 23 November 1915, It included George in the list of her children, and his name had later been marked 'killed' which showed that he must have died at some point after then, but it didn’t give the date of his death.

There is no surviving service record for him, which is no great surprise, since so many of them were destroyed during the Second World War. Unfortunately George Donaldson is not a very distinctive name, and a search on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) site for First World War army deaths produced 6 results for George Donaldson, and another 6 for G Donaldson. I wanted to see if I could identify the right one, and I like a challenge. I find it particularly satisfying to find out about the family members who died too young to have any descendants, and who can so easily fade from the collective family memory. My mother used to refer to him as Uncle Geordie, even though neither she nor any of her siblings had ever known him - her eldest sister was born in 1919 - so I wanted to find the information for her, as well as for myself.

Quite separately, I had been doing a lot of research on the men who served in the First World War based on the war memorial in the town where I now live. In the course of this I had learned quite a few ways of compensating for the lack of service records. I discovered that I could find out a surprising amount by combining scraps of information from a wide range of sources, not all of them military. In several cases where there were 3 or 4 local men with the same name I was able to work out exactly which was which. So I decided I would try applying the same techniques to my search for my mother's Uncle Geordie.

Starting with the 12 CWGC results, I was able to eliminate several of them because they contained information that meant they could not be my man. Three of them died well before the date of the Poor Law application, two more were several years too old, one was too young, and another was in the Canadian Infantry. So I now had five men to choose from, less than half of the original number. 

Next I consulted ‘Soldiers Died in the Great War’ which provides very little personal information about each casualty, but will usually give each man’s place of birth, and place of enlistment. Of my remaining five candidates, one was born in Morayshire, and recruited in Edinburgh, and one of the men listed just as G Donaldson by the CWGC turned out to be Gordon, not George. So now there were three who were born and recruited in Glasgow.

So far, so good, but I still needed to reduce the three to one, and then find some positive confirmation that the last one left was my great-uncle. I hoped that there would be a service record for one or two of them, with enough personal details to eliminate them from my enquiries, but no such luck. All of the deaths are listed in the GRO Index to War Deaths 1914-1921, but with no extra information, such as age at death, it was no help in establishing which of them might be the right one. But deaths of Scottish soldiers are also registered with GRO Scotland. The war deaths are part of the ‘Minor Records’ on ScotlandsPeople, and the indexes include age at death. Unfortunately the indexes don’t show regiment or service number, but by now I knew I was looking for a George Donaldson who died in 1917 or 1918, and there was only one whose age at death matched my great-uncle's date of birth, and this proved to be Pte George Donaldson 33164, 16th Battalion Highland Light Infantry, who died on 29 August 1918. 

I was reasonably sure I had found the right man, but I wanted some proof. There is a wonderful online resource for Glasgow men who died during the First World War, the index to the Glasgow Evening Times Roll of Honour. The index gives the date when the death was announced in the newspaper, and the page number. I found the entry for a Pte George Donaldson at around the right date, and on my next trip to the Mitchell Library I was able to consult the newspaper in the hope it would provide the corroborating evidence I needed. I found the entry, and there was even a photograph! but then it was sharp intake of breath time; the caption read ‘Pte George Donaldson, HLI (Killed); widow resides at 107 Maclean Street, Plantation, Glasgow.’. I thought I had been so clever, narrowing down those twelve names to one, but now it looked as though I had made a mistake somewhere, because I was looking for a single man, not a married man, so now I would need to backtrack…

Then I remembered one of my own rules ‘Never assume’. I had been assuming that he wasn’t married, because no-one in the family had even mentioned a wife. But by the time I started researching, or even asking questions, there was no-one alive with a personal memory of him. There was an easy way to find out, I could look for the marriage, and there it was on ScotlandsPeople. He had married Mary Arthur in April 1916, and the marriage entry proved beyond all doubt that I had found the right man after all. Not only were the parents’ details correct, the wedding took place at the address where the Donaldson family had lived since at least 1909, 77 Elder Park Street, Govan.

George had not yet joined the army, because he is shown with his civilian occupation of carter.  But conscription was well underway in 1916, so he may have joined or been called up soon after. He had only been only married for just over two years when he died, and probably spent most of that time away from his new wife. After he died, the Donaldson family probably lost touch with her, and I haven’t been able to find out what happened to her either (so far). When I showed my mother the results of my research, including the photograph, she said she could see a family resemblance. It’s a very small, grainy picture, printed from a roll of microfilm that had seen better days, but I have a picture of my grandfather, David Donaldson, at around the same age and I think she was right (my mother was usually right!). I have put them both here for comparison.

Glasgow Evening Times 1 Oct 1918

As a postscript, I should mention some sources I didn't use, but which might be helpful to other people trying to do the same kind of research. You can search for soldiers' wills on ScotlandsPeople or on GOV.UK, for England and Wales, either in the soldiers' wills category, or among the regular probate indexes, which also contain some soldiers' wills. Finding the name of the next-of-kin could be just the vital piece of information you need. The National Army Museum's Register of Soldiers' Effects 1901-1929 on Ancestry also gives the name of the next-of-kin. This wasn't available to me when I did the research a few years ago, and might have confused me a bit because of course George Donaldson's next-of-kin was the wife I didn't know about at the time! 

For soldiers who survived the war, the records I used to call my 'secret weapon' are the Absent Voters Lists which give a serviceman's home address along with his service number, regiment and battalion or equivalent unit. These don't all survive, but there is a good collection on Findmypast, and they are a real goldmine of information. There are also some wonderful local resources, so it pays to see what is available for the area where your soldier's family lived, such as a Roll of Honour, or a local or family history society may have researched the names on their war memorial. And of course there are newspapers, many of which are now on the British Newspaper Archive - although they don't yet include the Glasgow Evening Times (hint, hint!)

Those Places Thursday - the dear green place

Glasgow Cathedral

That's Glasgow, in case you were wondering. Glasgow has given many things to the world; great ocean-going liners from the Clyde shipyards, the architecture of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, two of Britain's oldest seats of learning, the deep-fried Mars Bar - and me! I used to feel self-conscious about my very English accent whenever I visited Glasgow (I left there when I was 7). But not any more, because I realised that I am in fact a very typical Glaswegian. I was born there, as were both my parents, all 4 grandparents and 5 of my great-grandparents; I have one line of Glasgow ancestry going back to the time of Mary, Queen of Scots; some of my ancestors were drawn to Glasgow from all over Scotland and (of course) from Ireland; I have the obligatory mix of protestant and catholic ancestors. But I think that the real clincher is that I don't live in Glasgow any more! There are lots of us about - never underestimate the extent of the Glaswegian diaspora!

Wishful thinking - my parents posed
the 6-year-old me in front of Glasgow University

Glasgow has some fantastic genealogical resources, so I consider myself very fortunate to come from there. The Mitchell Library is the place to visit when you are there, for the City of Glasgow Archives. You have to be there in person to consult most of these treasures, but there is a lot of good stuff online too. There is an index to the Evening Times Roll of Honour for the First World War on the Mitchell website.

My favourite online resource for Glasgow is probably The Glasgow Story, which has images from several archives in the Glasgow area, as well as the Valuation Rolls for 1913-1914 and the accompanying maps. There are lots more useful resources for Glasgow in the Glasgow Digital Library

There are also Scotland-wide sites with good Glasgow sections, like ScotlandsPlaces and the Statistical Accounts of Scotland for 1791-1799 and 1834-1845. And although I linked to it a couple of days ago, it never hurts to mention the National Library's Maps of Scotland again.

Finally, if you are serious about tracing your ancestry in the Glasgow area you can't do without the Glasgow and West of Scotland Family History Society who have a good range of publications and a number of offline services and facilities available only to members. It's well worth the few pounds a year it costs to join. Gaun yersel!

Do you love libraries?

I certainly do, and I can't remember a time when libraries were not a big part of my life.

This Saturday, 5 February is Save our Libraries Day. and there are lots of things you can do to show your support, even if you only have a few minutes to spare. I will be doing my bit online, because I won't be able to visit my local library in person on Saturday. This is because I have to be at work.

Luckily for me, though, work involves spending the day in a building where there is a wonderful library (shameless plug - if you are visiting The National Archives in person, don't forget the check out the Library, it's probably bigger than you thought).

One of my earliest memories involves a library, and not just any library, it was the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. I must have been about four years old when my dad took me there, and I must have already been  used to going to our local Langside Library and borrowing books. I know this because my memory of the Mitchell is a) being really impressed at seeing so many books and b) yelling the place down with disappointment when I found out that I couldn't borrow any of them! This was the old marble hall part of the library, quite possibly the staircase, where there is a really good echo

We moved to Wootton Wawen, Warwickshire when I was 7, and lived in Wootton Hall - there is a picture of it in an earlier post. Mum and I wanted to find out about the history of this amazing building, so we went to Henley-in-Arden Library nearby and found a book on the history of the village, which told us that our flat used to be the Bishop's Rooms. I may write about that sometime.

The following year we moved to Gillingham in Kent, and I spent a lot of time in Gillingham Library, first of all in the Children's Library, a wonderful traditional high-ceilinged room with murals of scenes from 'Wind in the Willows' where a clock in one of the pictures was a real working clock. I graduated to the adult library, and also enjoyed the temporary exhibitions in the library, but I particularly loved the reference library upstairs. I may be the only person to have bunked off school to spend more time in the library!

As a student I was first introduced to the Library of Congress classification system used in the University of Warwick Library, but the university and its library were still pretty new back then, so when I had a serous research project to do, I used the fabulous Birmingham Central Library. This was where I first experience the thrill of doing original research for myself, and there is nothing quite like it (hands up who agrees with me on that!).

I took a long break from education, and did the motherhood thing too. And what did I do when I discovered that Firstborn was on the way? I went to Hendon Library and borrowed some baby books of course! When we moved a few miles to a bigger house I joined Harrow Libraries, borrowing books and  vinyl records - remember them? I attended evening classes in more than one branch library, and when I took up family history I used the Local Studies collection in the Civic Centre Reference Library.

Once the family history thing had really kicked in, I helped my local family history put on an exhibition in the library, and carried on with evening classes in libraries in Harrow and elsewhere, only this time I was teaching them. I don't teach any more, but I do a lot of talks to family history societies and other groups, who often meet in...libraries!

Now I live in lovely, leafy Buckinghamshire, within walking distance of Chesham Library, and my library card gives me access to all kinds of wonderful online sources, as well as the books, DVDs and other facilities in the library itself. So far, Chesham Library is not under threat, but others in the county are, and the Friends of Stony Stratford Library, at the other end of the county mounted a brilliant campaign, which got massive media coverage. The author, Philip Pullman made an eloquent defence of Oxfordshire libraries at a meeting on 20 January at Oxford Town Hall, which is worth reading in full.

I can't imagine how my life would have been without all the libraries I have known and loved. The way I have used them over the years has changed, but they are still essential to me. I am very pleased to say that both Firstborn and his younger brother have turned out to be avid readers (and they both write well, too), and my lifelong library addiction must have had some influence there. My elderly mother, who passed on the habit to me, still makes regular trips to her local branch library, which is within walking distance of her house, even though she needs her walking stick to get there these days.