Age Shall Not Weary Them ...

... but it's certainly been taking a toll on my self-esteem this week!  Yesterday saw the first 'day excursion' of my complete retirement.  I had spotted in a regular e-newsletter a free WW1 movie show at the National Archives in Kew, so for the cost of only getting there plus a lunchtime snack,  what was there to lose?  As well as my wish to see two war-based films that were being shown - together with a discussion featuring some of the cast, and others behind the production - I decided to make a day of it, and further some research I'd started some seven or eight years ago.

It wasn't until I made my final preparations on Thursday evening that it dawned on me that this would be the first time I'd made that journey on a working weekday.  Would there be a space to park where I had done on Saturdays in the past, along Orange Hill Road in HA8 near Burnt Oak Library?  Sure enough, as I made my way there at about 10.0 am, it was very soon clear that there wouldn't be, and invoking 'plan B' revealed a similar situation at Stanmore station car park at the nearby terminus of the Northern Line.  Any idea of making use of the underground to get to Kew was thus abandoned and, reverting to courier mode, I drove there instead.

My research concerned my great uncle, who had committed suicide in 1913. Following up on a newspaper report of the inquest, I had an idea that his demise might have been prompted by recollection of or hallucination featuring some even that he had gone through during his military service. (He had spent several years in India, broken only by an 8-month posting to South Africa during the Boer War.)

In gathering my thoughts and papers together for this visit, I decided to check over all the details I had recorded about the man.  I was dismayed - and not a little deflated - by what I found.  I recall being a little surprised that he was always known by his middle name, William, when I had him recorded as Arthur William Thrower, but this is far from uncommon; indeed I knew someone from my schooldays who fitted the same pattern.  In my earlier research I had obtained a copy of his Attestation Papers when he had enlisted in the Essex Regiment in February 1893.  I noticed that, although I had noted his birth from the register index as in the September quarter of 1873, his age on enlistment was given as 20 years and 4 months.

This week, I decided to check his birth once more and, to my amazement, I discovered another entry in the register index, of a William Thrower born in the December quarter of 1872, which would make much more sense.  The age he gave at enlistment would suggest that he was born in October 1872 and, with no additional forename to create confusion, it certainly indicated that I'd recorded the wrong details when I set out on tracing my family history all those years ago.

When I set about replacing one date by the other, I noticed that I had recorded his baptism from the parish records ... 8th June 1873 ... earlier than the start of the birth quarter I had previously recorded!  The revised picture reveals the fact that he died just weeks - perhaps only days - before his birthday, a time when, aged 41, still single and living with his parents, he might have been particularly vulnerable, emotionally.

The shock of making this discovery of incompetence came hot on the heels of other revelations during the course of a slightly more prolonged exercise tidying up some of my records.  During those early days I had received whole bundles of information from distant cousins, and had simply entered it all to my own database, assuming it all to be true.  Many correspondents had been similarly generous at about the same time, and much of the incoming details had never been verified.

A location that wasn't clearly identified prompted me to check one particular family on Thursday morning and, in the course of resolving this, I discovered the marriage record for the couple ... only fourteen years after the husband was alleged to have been born!  I eventually found his  birth some nine years earlier.  The whole experience led to a resolve to go through all the items I got from that particular source as soon as I have the time, and verify as much of it as I can.

Although this might take some months, I'm sure it will be rewarding, and restore some of my battered pride.  Meanwhile, I have to plan further searches into the doings of the Essex Regiment in India!