The First and Second World Wars produced an enormous amount of central government administration, a lot of which is stored safely in our national archives and is discussed in Section Three. But many of the by-products created by officialdom also ended up in people’s homes. Some soldiers held onto their discharge papers after they had completed their military service, or would have received letters granting them exemption from compulsory conscription into the army, and many of those that did serve received medals or kept part of their uniform apparel as a souvenir of their contribution to the war effort. If you can find documents proving that your ancestor fought during either World War, or even that they were in the army, air force, navy or merchant navy before or after the wars, these will give you an indication of where you need to start looking to find any more documents that may be held in the archives for them. If you have an idea of the date they served and their rank, this is often enough information for you to start with, as will be explained in Section Three. Most medals were awarded for service at a particular time or for specific battles or events, so if you do find medals around the house you can examine the design to identify what they were awarded for.
In addition to the military paperwork generated by the wars, a wealth of civilian material also survives from that era, such as ration books, letters to and from loved ones separated by conflict, and telegrams from the army informing next of kin of the death of a soldier, all of which illustrate how difficult that time would have been for your ancestors. Civilian documents issued at other times are equally informative, like passports with a person’s photo, vital details and stamps from the places they visited, or identity papers and naturalization certificates if they settled in Britain from a foreign country.
Do not pass off as junk the general day-to-day items you might find when hunting in the attic or through drawers. Old receipts, tickets to the theatre, ballet, opera or to a football match, magazines that have been kept, all give an idea of what your ancestors enjoyed spending their money on and doing in their spare time. These are key indicators to what their lifestyle would have been like, and what they were like as people. If they believed that these bits and pieces were worth holding onto then that is an obvious clue as to what was important to them.
SUMMARY
Clues to look out for around the house:
• Civil registration and religious certificates confirming births, marriages and deaths
• Wills, deeds and legal documents
• Newspaper articles and obituaries
• School reports
• Family bible and name patterns
• Letters and postcards
• Military, naval, air force and merchant navy documents, medals and uniform apparel
• Civilian wartime letters, ration books, identity cards
• Passports and citizenship documents
• Old receipts, magazines, tickets to the theatre or to football matches
• Photos
Photos are by far the most fascinating of our family artefacts. Even if we cannot name the majority of people in the frame it is always interesting to observe the different fashions, expressions and landscapes, and to try to work out when the picture was taken and what those people’s lives would have been like. Photos in the Victorian and Edwardian periods were often very formal. Most people did not have a camera of their own and would have visited a photographer’s studio or had their picture taken at a photographer’s stand at a fair. The rarity of a photo opportunity during these eras meant that people wore their finery or would borrow clothes from the studio’s wardrobe to dress up for the occasion. The clothes worn by the subjects can help you to identify a rough date for the photo, as specialists can establish when specific types of dress were fashionable. Your local archive or museum may be able to help you date the costume or background in an old photo. Photographic studios frequently printed their company name and address on photos, so you can trace this in trade directories to establish when that studio was in business, and to work out the rough geographical location where the person in the photo was living.
Do not be scared to take a photo out of its frame to ensure that there are no names or other written details hidden on the back. If the picture does not have any names or a date written on it, show it to as many elderly relatives as you can to see if anybody recognizes the faces or location. It might also be a good idea to make copies of photographs you find in relatives’ houses, either by scanning them or taking digital photographs of the images – having obtained permission first. This way you can write on the back of your copies each time you identify a new face. Carry the pictures around with you so that you can keep adding to them as you show more relatives. You can also find out about how to preserve old photographs, or restore fading images, from local archives and specialist companies who now offer fairly cheap methods of storage and restoration techniques.
‘Do not be scared to take a photo out of its frame to ensure that there are no names or other written details hidden on the back.’
Preserve Your Past for the Future
Whilst talking to your extended family and delving into the family treasures they have hoarded, it will become apparent just how important it is to preserve your own family photos and mementos for future generations. Your children, nieces, nephews or grandchildren may not seem interested in their past while you are enthusiastically hunting away in the archives, but there will more than likely come a time when they will be curious to flick through old photo albums, read old family letters, and learn more about a past era that seems so different from today, but that their parents and grandparents were a part of.
The fantastic thing about genealogy is its educational element. Whilst finding out the names, dates and places of each person on your family tree, it is essential to put their lives into a social context, to find out what the major political and social events were that would have shaped their lives and affected their standard of living. Might they have visited the Great Exhibition when it opened in Hyde Park in 1851? Did they fight in the Boer War at the turn of the last century? Would they have been shocked to hear news of the Titanic’s sinking in April 1912? Placing your family history into a wider national and international historical context brings textbook history to life. These people you are related to really did exist, and while the name ‘John Briggs’ on a census return may not seem immediately exciting, when you look at the bigger picture and learn more about what life was like for him living in a Victorian slum, his existence gains meaning and our combined national past seems closer. As you find out more about each ancestor and can pin major historical events to their lives, you can help the children in your family to understand their history.
SUMMARY
• What is the aim of my research?
• What do I know about my ancestors?
• What do my relatives know about our ancestry?
• Are there any family mysteries to clear up?
• Are there any family heirlooms to give