Grange War20

Tracing your World War One ancestor

Here is an example of how one person traced her Great War ancestor, with a few tips on how you might go about tracing your own if you are starting from scratch

Ivor Augustus Darby, Private 53187

I became involved in Grangetown Local History Society, due to research into my family history. The internet now is a wonderful tool for this. I followed my Darby family tree and on Ancestry.co.uk, a page next to my great grandfather's name Ivor Darby said "remembered with honour" and that he had been killed during the Great War.

My grandfather died when I was a teenager and Parkinson's robbed me of any time and conversation that I might have had with him in his later years. Indeed my father, wasn't aware of this grandfather and I had to tell him about his grandfather Ivor. More research followed.

Ivor was the son of the late Henry and Martha Darby, of 81 Clare Road in Grangetown; he was the husband of Florence Annie Darby, of 38 Cairns St, Cathays, Cardiff - they married in 1905. In 1901, he was a butcher's errand boy, his father a mason's assistant.

I'm lucky because my great grandfather's records have survived. It showed that before he joined up, he was a haulier working in Grangetown, working with horses. When he first enlisted, he was sent to Ormskirk, probably looking after the horses that were sent from America and training them for the front. He did this until he was needed in the Army, when he was sent to the front with the Cheshire regiment. He lasted a month before he was injured and he survived another month before dying on 4th May 1918, aged 32. He was buried in Boulogne with two others. Luckily I got to visit, probably the first of my family to do so and it was very humbling.

HOW DO I FIND MY RELATIVE'S WAR RECORDS?

A good starting point is the Commonwealth War Graves Commission - it has a fantastic website, in which you can search under names or regiments for free. It gives service numbers, sometimes next of kin and crucially where men are buried or commemorated. Ivor's details are here for example
Genealogy websites like Ancestry.co.uk and Findmypast charge but are used regularly by family historians. Researching our online memorial, we used these sites to search military records - casualties and in some cases service records; we also cross checked family details with censuses, birth and marriage indexes, as well as family trees that people make public. Ancestry is also available online for Cardiff library users. There are other websites like Forces War Records and others with details on Royal Navy and Merchant Navy losses.
In the local studies section of Cardiff Library, we also checked local directories for 1914-1920, which list where people lived in both street and surname order; also we checked microfiche copies of the South Wales Echo, Western Mail and the weekly Cardiff Times. However, be aware that quite a few deaths were reported weeks and sometimes months after men died or were reported missing. There are family notices but more fullsome tributes follow after 1915-16, with notices under "Killed In Action" and fuller family tributes and photos. An imcomplete but useful list of Echo obits has been put online already.
Glamorgan Archive in Leckwith, near the Cardiff City Stadium, also has local directories but also files on school records, which include details of former pupils who served in the war.

My research led to me to Cardiff library where it said his name was on the Grangetown Memorial in Grange Gardens. And it is there, right at the top, alongside many names, so many from one small area of Cardiff. My grandfather was from Grangetown and we together had walked past the memorial. But he never spoke about his father on the memorial. I wanted to find out more about Grangetown and that has led me to the Grangetown local history society. They're a wonderful group of people making history real and right for the people of Grangetown and coming generations.

Michelle Darby-Charles