Live webchat with the Imperial War Museum on researching family history, Wednesday 18 January 1-2pm

I come from a family of soldiers and have done pretty well finding out about most of them. My grandfather ended up as a Yeoman Warder in the Tower of London, where my father remembered being given chocolate by Sir Roger Casement shortly before he was executed (Sir Roger that is, not my father).
I have come a bit unstuck with my great-grandfather who was a Battery Sergeant-Major in the Royal Artillery and afterwards was in charge of the NAAFI in Dover Castle. I would like to find out more about his service in the RA, but not sure how to set about it. I live in France which makes visits to the various records offices a bit difficult, but I can't find anything on the internet. Can you help me with advice about how to get his service record which would cover the years from about 1855-1881 (when he appears on the census).

I started 2 years ago, but still find I can't get further on some of my family......

I still could use some advice on my Irish gggrandfather, as I know his wife now (found her name recently via a history book on Vermont where their son emigrated!!) - BUT although I have one piece of evidence that they were both Irish, I don't know their ages or where in Ireland they were from.

(John Andrews m Marion Watson, around 1837, probably in Dublin.
No record found of this, their births, or any of their children's births, online.)

Sorry, missed the question out. Is there any way of getting back as far as the conquest?

What romantic backgrounds some of you have. My ancestors seem to be rooted in British clay, from Leicestershire to the Hebrides. Maybe in the distant past some of them came over with the Conqueror!

My great, great grandfather was born in Belgium and has a Belgian surname, but is described on his marriage certificate as a British Subject. He was born in Belgium between 1814 and 1818 and married (a Scottish woman) in England in 1852. Is there a record kept somewhere of British Subjects? I'm intrigued to know how he became one.

My grandfather went to South Africa in 1901 to join the Cape Mounted Police based in Postmasburg & covering the Kimberley region. He died in WW1 in the South African Rifles at the Battle of Sandfontein on 26th Sept 1914. How can I find out more about how he came to go out to South Africa and wonder if he first went there in the Boer War, perhaps with a Surrey regiment. He lived in Mortlake & is registered there in the Census of 1891 & 1901 but there is no reference to military service. He appears to have had a long & distant courtship with my grandmother (a friend of his sister in London) as they married in Kimberley in 1909 - I can't imagine they would have had the money to have visited each other between 1901 and then.

My husband's great grandfather was born in 1815 'at Sea (British citizen)'. On his wedding certificate his father's occupation is given as 'soldier'. I am wondering if there is any connection with the Battle of Waterloo given the date and that wives often went to war with their husbands. How can I follow up this hypothesis? Births at sea don't appear to be registered this early.

Should have added, he was not in the Signals Corps, but joined the Army Education Corps in 1936. When the war started he was transferred to the Gloucesters and then back to the AEC once he had returned from France.

Hi Mel,

Today would have been my father's 97th birthday. How can I find out more about his army life? I remember some of it, of course, as I was born in 1939 and from 1941 to 1948 he was stationed in the UK, teaching cadets at Beachley, but he never spoke much about his experiences in France between Dunkirk and his evacuation from Cherbourg some weeks later. I sent for his record, which told me a little, but not why his unit was not at Dunkirk and what happened to them as they made their way to safety.

He seems to have been doing signals work, as he talked about code books (his young superior officer was most concerned at having to leave behind a safe, which he had personally signed responsibility for, as they left Rouen precipitately with the Germans entering at the other end of town. He was with difficulty dissuaded from leaving the keys in it so that it would not be destroyed when the Germans blew it up for the code books inside)