Genealogy Chat

Ooops - I thought I'ld already posted this - I know some of the following info is now posted, so apologies for the duplication.


Susan - it would really help searching the CEF attestations if you spent the money at SP to get his b.cert.


SP is ScotlandsPeople - it's where you buy OPR (Old Parish Register) & census images & BMD certs:
http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/
Re BMD certs - if the B/M/D is over 100/75/50 y old, one has the option of buying a formal paper extract or certificate (thru the GROS/NRS) or an uncertified image of the page in the local registrar's register thru SP.
The latter costs abt 1.40 GBP (SP's usual charge for most of their images) - the former costs 10 GBP and upwards, but it's what you'ld need for a passport, say - see:
http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/files2/family-records/leaflet-s2.pdf

Here's a list of SP's offerings:
http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/Content/Help/index.aspx?r=554&413

There's a more detailed listing of OPR availability at:
http://www.scotlandspeoplehub.gov.uk/research/list-of-oprs.html

Although the only online source for census images is SP, Ancestry and FMP have transcriptions online, but you need to buy a sub for them.
Most of 1841 is free online at:
http://www.freecen.org.uk/

Coverage for later years varies with location - see:
http://www.freecen.org.uk/statistics.html
The details at http://www.freecen.org.uk/statistics.html show precisely what is covered, e.g.,:
Piece Place Comprising Status Remarks
SCT1841/602 Largs Largs On-Line
RG9/2767 Standish Standish
RG9/2768 Standish Standish , Eccleston
RG12/3045 Wigan Standish & Langtree On-Line
RG12/3046 Wigan Parbold , Shevington , Standish & Langtree , Worthington , Wrightlington

In England, the census was ordered by piece #, and each rego district had a block of piece #s, which they assigned to their subdistricts, so usually each subdistrict had 1 or more piece #s to itself. In the above eg, Standish had 2 in 1861 and in 1891.
As the population increased, subdistricts got more piece #s, so the #s changed from census to census.
Scotland organized a lot of things by civil parish - mostly they were smaller in popul'n than English subdistricts, so there's no need to keep renumbering them.
The only problem arose with the big cities, and there they handled the problem by adding a suffix e.g., Aberdeen/Old Machar gets 168a/b, Edinburgh/St Cuthberts/Canongate gets 685/1, /2 or /3, etc.
[Note the Largs psh #, 602, forms part of the ref# in greyghost's post (2 Sep 2014 16:12)]

The parish # can be used incensus searches - enter it in place of the piece # at FreeCEN, or in its box at Ancestry:
http://search.ancestry.co.uk/search/db.aspx?dbid=1004
It's also incorporated into the batch # for C of S christenings & marrs at FS - atch # usually has the form:
C11pppn or M11pppn, but if there's too many registers (like in big cities), the recipe faild.
ppp is the parish #, with leading zeros in the far north.
n is a register n - theses are 2,4,5,6,7,8,9 pre-1855, and 1, 3 for 1855-1875ish - the lower the #, the older it is in the sequence - not all of the sequences are used, typically.
[MB post 1855, they're not OPR entries, but GROS index entries]

Here's my g gran:
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XBW6-GV4
Name: Elizabeth Johnston
Gender: Female
Christening Date: 04 Jan 1854
Christening Place: LONMAY,ABERDEEN,SCOTLAND
Birth Date: 25 Nov 1853
Father's Name: James Johnston
Mother's Name: Elizabeth Anderson
Indexing Project (Batch) Number: C11219-5 , System Origin: Scotland-ODM , GS Film number: 993429

Even if you've gotten this much, it can still be worth purchasing the image of the original entry.
In this case, it says:
Lonmay OPR 1854
25th November 1854
Elizabeth Johnston, illegitimate daughter of James
Johnston Farm Servant Adie, Cruden & Elizabeth Anderson
Crisekelly, was born 25th November 1853, & baptized by Mr.
Gibbon 4th January 1854 before witnesses viz: William
Anderson & Elizabeth Scott, Crisekelly

[Adie is probably a misrecording of Adnie, and 1853 in text should probably be 1854 as per heading. The witnesses were Eliz J's grandparents]


There are 1890s maps for every Scottish county showing parishes at:
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/gazetteer/

With a name like McDonald, I would think you'll have to narrow things down, so here's a family from FreeCEN, followed by the use of batch #s to limit the search to a specific register in a specific parish church.

Piece: SCT1841/218 Place: Longside -Aberdeenshire Enumeration District: 1
Civil Parish: Longside Ecclesiastical Parish, Village or Island: -
Folio: 1 Page: 6
Address: Hillhead Of Mintlaw
Surname First name(s) Sex Age Occupation Where Born Remarks
SLESSOR Wm M 55 Carrier Aberdeenshire
SLESSOR Chris F 45 Aberdeenshire
Page: 1/7 SLESSOR Jane F 10 Aberdeenshire
SLESSOR John M 8 Aberdeenshire
SLESSOR Jas M 6 Aberdeenshire

Piece: SCT1851/218 Place: Longside -Aberdeenshire Enumeration District: 1
Civil Parish: Longside Ecclesiastical Parish, Village or Island: -
Folio: 176 Page: 21 Schedule: 100
Address: Hill Of Mintlaw
Surname First name(s) Rel Status Sex Age Occupation Where Born Remarks
SLESSOR William Head M M 66 Farmer Of 15 Acres & Carrier Aberdeenshire - Longside
SLESSOR Christian Wife M F 52 Aberdeenshire - Old Deer
SLESSOR Mary Dau U F 26 Aberdeenshire - Longside
Page: 176/22 SLESSOR John D Son U M 17 Farmer & Carrier's Son Aberdeenshire - Longside
GREIG Christian Grndau - F 2 Aberdeenshire - Longside
[The parish # for Longside (Aberdenshire) is 218 - it's part of the header above]


Using https://familysearch.org/search/collection/list#page=1®ion=UNITED_KINGDOM_IRELAND

So lets look up Christian Greig at:
https://familysearch.org/search/collection/1771030
gets 3034 hits for Christian Greig
Entering the batch # C112185 reduces this to 1 hit.
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XYXP-12Q
Indexing Project (Batch) Number: C11218-5 , System Origin: Scotland-ODM , GS Film number: 993340

Just entering Greig & the batch # c112185 gets 116 hits including a sibling
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XYXR-PL4

Just entering Greig & c112181 gets 82 hits including 2 siblings
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XYTL-9JL

I can search for John Greig and William Slessor's marrs at:
https://familysearch.org/search/collection/1771074
Only get a hit for Wm
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XTR1-NYM (21/12/1820)

Now repeat the search naming the spouse, but drop the batch # - I get another hit for Wm
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XTJM-J3G (23/12/1820)
and one for John & Margt:
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XTR1-NYM (14/12/1848)

Two marrs for Wm & Christy?? - well, not really - FS doesn't always distinguish between marrs and banns. Christy was from Old Deer psh and Wm was from Logside psh, so banns would be read in both places - the marr would usually take place in the bride's psh (as here).
The road from the Hillhead to Mintlaw village was the parish boundary for the majority of its length

Alternatively, now I know the parents, I can just use them to search. This gets the above 4 hits, plus my g grandad (pob=Rathen parish #=235)
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XTR1-NYM
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/XYG1-54Q

Susan - Re "how do I delete threads which are not relevent, ie not my relative?"

First - a bit of terminology - a thread is a collection of related posts.
As your initial post started the thread, you're its owner. However, you don't own any posts made by others, and you can't change them, even if they're wrong or irrelevant - only their owners can change them (well, if they were obscene or violated the rules in some other way, you could click on the report button in the posts header, and GR can remove or edit the reported post - they never edit, just remove after a review).

Posts you own have 2 other options in their header, viz edit & delete, which you can exercise.

WARNING - if you delete your very first post (i.e., the one that started the thread), then the whole thread gets deleted. One shouldn't do this - it annoys the other posters on your thread that all the work they put into their answers is gone, and even if you think you've done with the thread, but a couple of years down the road, you have another query on the same guy, then making a fresh post on the thread sort of reactivates it, and posters don't have to do all the background lookups again, if they're already on this thread. Also, if the thread's still around, anyone can google John Henderson MacDonald, and see the thread.


If you edit the very first post, you can also edit the thread's title.

so much information, so little time......this is great gives me lots to follow up.
I actually have my fathers birth certificate, all in little pieces, will look again at it. Took it upon myself to sellotape it years ago anfd that hasnt helped.
Florence is a mystery because I have her born 1889 in Preston, Lancs and is in 1911 census still with her family as a ladys maid and named then as Florence Fanny. but cant find a record of her birth ie registered.
I was told years ago that she had married an MP for Shrewsbury. whether true or not dont know. I only found out that my father had been married before my mother when I was in my teens.

I think I can help a bit here with this lengthy reply. Stick with me and I think I can narrow down your options.

There is no army unit called a contingent, so this might send you off on a wild goose chase. It's just a group of soldiers with no formal structure.

When Great Britain accepted Canada's offer to send an infantry division on Aug 06 1914, it was expected that it would be comprised of some of the 60,000 members of the Canadian militia. Instead Colonel Sam Hughes, Minister of Militia and Defence 1911-1916 decided to organize volunteers into new consecutively-numbered battalions.

The First Contingent of the Canadian Expeditionary Force sailed on Oct 03 1914, was comprised of the 1st to 17th battalions plus the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. By the end of the war there would be two hundred and sixty numbered battalions in existence.

Shortly after the First Contingent left for England, the government of Canada authorised the recruiting of a second contingent. During the winter of 1914-1915 the units composing this new force were mobilized and trained. In the spring of 1915 the Second Contingent sailed for England. The summer of 1915 was spent in training at Shorncliffe on the coast of Kent and in September they left for the front as the Second Canadian Division under the command of a Canadian officer, Major-General Richard Turner. The 23rd and 30th Battalions remained behind in England as reserves.

•18th Infantry Battalion: Western Ontario
•19th Infantry Battalion:
•20th Infantry Battalion: 1st Central Ontario Regiment
•21st Infantry Battalion:
•22nd Infantry Battalion: Canadiens Francais
•23rd Infantry Battalion: Montreal Battalion
•24th Infantry Battalion: Victoria Rifles
•25th Infantry Battalion: Nova Scotia
•26th Infantry Battalion: New Brunswick Battalion
•27th Infantry Battalion: City Of Winnipeg Regiment
•28th Infantry Battalion: North West Battalion
•29th Infantry Battalion: Vancouver Battalion / Tobin's Tigers
•30th Infantry Battalion: British Columbia
•31st Infantry Battalion: Alberta Overseas Battalion
•32nd Infantry Battalion: Manitoba and Saskatchewan

So your ancestor would have been in one of these 15 battalions. In WW1, battalion organisation was as follows:

•One infantry battalion of approximately 1000 officers and men = 4 companies
•One company = 4 platoons
•One platoon = 4 sections .

Many of these men were of British origin. The parentage of the soldiers was especially important given that during the First World War, Canadian soldiers were entrusted with defending Great Britain against its enemies.

For instance, I see that when a later battalion, the 49th, landed at Plymouth, on 12 June 1915, three quarters of the 1,010 officers and men were British-born; most of the rest had been born in Canada, with a handful of Americans and others making up the rest. Historians have often remarked on the predominance of recent British immigrants in the early contingents of the CEF. While the 49th was clearly no exception to this generalization, the Britishness of the original unit should not be exaggerated. Although most members of the 49th were happy to stress their English, Irish, or Scottish roots, a good many of those listed as British-born could have come to Canada as children.

Thank you.
How can I find out if my father was in those units?
I feel he must have gone to work in Canada before the war started. He married his first wife Florence Walton 21 July 1915. John Macdonald and Florence Francizs Walton.
He 25 years, she 26 years.
Marriage certificate says
private 2nd canadian contingent, motor mechanic, Dibgate Camp, Thorncliffe
Son of Robert Macdonald, estate agent
She 42 Severn street, Castlefields, Shrewsbury, daughter of Henry Makepeace Walton,gasfitter
Church of our Lady of Helptanstall, Shrewsbury.
My ather worked as a valet at Glamis Castle in Sco,tland when the Queen Mother was Lady Bowes Lyon. He would have been in his early teens.

have you done as suggested and searched through the attestation papers for all the John Mc/Macdonalds who enrolled in the CEF?

if he did enrol in Canada, his record is virtually certainly there

so the only thing to do is look for it

however is it possible he joined the Canadians in England? for instance if they needed motor mechanics ... I don't know whether this was something that occurred or was common

you'll find this interesting

http://www.stepshort.co.uk/downloads/Canadians.pdf

I would start by contacting

http://navigating-history.net/folkestone/

and ask them which units were at Dibgate camp on the day of your father's wedding.

Incidentally it's Shorncliffe not Thorncliffe

I disagree with Paul - I think the best route is to get hold of his attestation papers, and the needed first step for this is to know his exact d.o.b. Although enlistees sometimes lied abt their age, they rarely lied abt their b'day, just their y.o.b.. The attestation papers will list the name & addy of his n.o.k. (Florence might be listed as an amendment, but otherwise it's likely to be a parent or some other relle, possibly one in the UK). The papers also list previous military experience, so if he'd had 5 y with the Shropshire militia, or 5 y with the Hamilton & Wentworth militia one could infer difft things abt how long he;d been in Canada. The papers also give the date and place of his enlistment, and his service # (which doesn't change in the CEF), and also indicates which area he was recruited in and which battalion he was initially assigned to, although some, like the 23rd & 30th bns that Paul noted (and the 32nd that Paul omitted) were just reinforcment/ replacement bns, and his actual service would have been in some other unit.

The necessary search URL was the first thing I posted on this thread.

actually mgnv I posted it ahead of you, the direct link to the search page :-)

(is it just me or are those pages seriously messing up? the header coming out as a long list of links ...)

here is the first random plain 'John Mcdonald' in the search results for that name

MCDONALD, JOHN >> 22/08/1882 100887 RG 150, Accession 1992-93/166, Box 6736 - 1

http://tinyurl.com/prz4yql
(sorry, I wasn't aware some people's browsers still failed to wrap long URLs)

okay great the image itself won't load for me, but if that happens you can copy the 'image location' from that page and use it open it, that one is

http://data2.archives.ca/cef/gpc012/532250a.gif

(you can also click for page 2 which is the back of the form, showing the physical exam info)

and Susan you can see that as an example of the kind of info that is included in those records, that mgnv describes

yes, actual date of birth could help considerably in trawling those many records

you can't use it as a search term but as you see above it is shown in the results lists

Joonie - right sorry abt that . My page has a link to yours, but also has a link explaining how to get a copy of the service file if you can't wait a year for the freebie.
I meant to add this note to my post, but I was also watching La Vuelta, so I wasn't really on top of things.

You can search using d.o.b. on Ancestry, but you need the right sub to get details. I searched for d.o.b.=22/8/1882 and for some reason, I didn't get Joonie's guy - presumably a stuff up by Ancestry. I did get another guy:

http://data2.archives.ca/cef/gpc012/532205a.gif

Although I don't have a suitable Ancestry sub, I can tell who they're referring to, but it's really too geeky for me to post. [You've seen my posts on here, and can form some opinion on what I might consider too geeky to post]

This guy was a conscript, so there's only 1 page.
Some officers also had just one page, e.g.,
http://data2.archives.ca/cef/gpc010/487161a.gif
but not all:
http://data2.archives.ca/cef/gpc010/487148a.gif
http://data2.archives.ca/cef/well2/237315a.gif
Nursing Sisters were officers in the CEF - look up Gladys Wake - her digized service file is online - it's to the right of the attestation papers
http://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item/?op=pdf&app=CEF&id=9989-48
[Just so you know where to look - if someone had purchased your John's service file, and took an electronic version (saving postage) then the digitized file would subsequently be placed online]

Take Joonie's guy:
http://data2.archives.ca/cef/gpc012/532250a.gif
to get his second page just edit that URL & change the final a into b to get the URL for the 2nd page:
http://data2.archives.ca/cef/gpc012/532250b.gif

I see mgnv disagrees with me but the reason I made the suggestion to start by narrowing down the units is because John Macdonald is such a common name that trawling through attestation papers could be a herculean task. At least this way you can narrow down the numbers of John Macdonalds.

I do have a sub to Forces War Records (won't renew - it's rubbish)

They don't have any actual records, they just collate (and often inaccurately) information that is often free elsewhere, or is available on other more reasonably priced sites.

In the case of the soldier that Paul has referenced, it's actually John Henry McDonald, who was born Waterford, Ontario (although FWR don't have his full name or any info about him, that comes from Soldiers of WW1 on the bac-lac links already given).

May I politely suggest that long URLs can be shortened on a site such as goo.gl so that they don't stretch the page? It turns that very long link above into something more manageable, like this

http://goo.gl/xh1hox

Thanks MarieCeleste. However, I do think Forces War Records might be worth looking at.... there's a John Henderson MacDonald but he was a Lieutenant at the end of the war so it's not likely to be him. There are lots of JH Macdonalds but many of them are Royal Navy so they can be taken out of the mix.

Paul, I'll reiterate what I said above - Forces War Records do not have any records that can't be found on other sites (in fact they don't hold any actual records per se), their Canadian records are particularly inferior to what can be found on the links already given.

I'm sure you're right MarieCeleste. Having never used the site I can't speak from experience but I'm certainly aware of a number of sites that follow that practice.

I wonder about the John Henderson MacDonald who was a lieutenant at the end of the war ... my grandfather was promoted to 2nd lieutenant shortly before the end of the war as a 'battlefield commission' (I suspect not actually 'battlefield'), could something like that have happened?

I tried searching at the link to Forces War Records that MarieCeleste gave in shortened URL form above for John Henderson MacDonald, to see what info it gave on a free search, but I get only a string of useless garble in return ...

but I found it at the London Gazette

https://www.thegazette.co.uk/all-notices/notice?text=john%20henderson%20macdonald

https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/30586/page/3478
London Gazette 19 March 1918 page 478

R.M. Engineers
The undermentioned to be temp. 2nd Lieut.:--
John Henderson Macdonald
4th March 1918

so it seems my guess about wartime commission was on the mark

but whether this is the right man is an open question

R.M. Engineers, could have transferred units during the war?

my grandfather did that too and received his commission in his new regiment :-)

Hmmmm.... could an army soldier transfer to the Royal Marine Engineers? I guess stranger things can happen in war! ;-)