Henry

This evening Henry was remembered in the Roll of Honour at the Tower of London. He died in October 1918, almost making it to the end of the war, and is buried in Romeries Cemetery in France. A 19yr old young man from Fordyce in Banffshire, who was a private in the Gordon Highlanders and a recipient of the Military Medal.

Henry was a younger brother of my Great Grandmother. Born to James and Margaret, one of their 12 children!! About 10yrs ago I decided to research my mother’s family with the help of the website “Scotland’s People”. I had little to go on and to make things difficult my Grandmother was known by a different given name, than the one on her birth certificate. I persevered and with the help of a distant relative in Banff was taken to the family burial plot in Portsoy and to a head stone that told a sad story, but was a starting point for my investigations.

With a list of names that would be accessible within the permitted time frame for searches. I moved from one person, my Great Grandmother to dozens!!! They had big families those days, 10 – 12 children was the norm.

A recent new search led me to the 1911 census and the discovery that at the time of Henry’s death in 1918, James (his father) has lost his wife and three of his children to Phihisis (tuberculosis). He would not have known that in the next five years he would lose another daughter and a granddaughter (my grandmother) to the same disease. They lived in the countryside, no inner city overcrowding there, but without the drugs that were decades away from being developed, there was no treatment.

I’m an avid fan of the programme “Who do you think you are” and can relate to the feeling that the subjects express. I feel that I “know” some of the ancestors that I have discovered and learned a little of their working life through the book “Farm Life in Northeast Scotland 1840-1914” “The Poor Man’s Country”!!!

There is more to find out about Henry. I want to find out why he was awarded the Military Medal and what was published in the Gazette in February 1919.

I wasn't able to attend the ceremony this evening, but they are all being videoed and will be accessible on the website.