I’ve just noticed it has been nearly three months since I last posted here. Like a lot of family historians I have been busy with the First World War. In my case, Rugby Family History Group is celebrating its 30th Anniversary. We realized this coincided with the centenary of the start of WW1 and so, as a special project, we would try to find out more about the names of the men on the local Memorial Gates. It turned out there were more than 400 men and the list gave just a surname and initials. My job was to find a name and date of death of each, so that our members could pick a name (or names) to research.
This research would be published online on the centenary of each man’s death. (If you are interested you can see the result at A big job, and there is still a handful of names we haven’t found yet. When I needed a break from this, and with my newly acquired expertise in WW1 research, I decided I should try to find out more about my own relatives who died. I started with Alfred Smith.
I would have had no chance in finding anything about this man if I didn’t already have a valuable source of information – my great grandfather’s grave stone. Henry Madder lived in Springfield, near Chelmsford in Essex and called himself Henry Smith. I had already found Henry’s grave in the graveyard of Holy Trinity Church in Springfield (in the shadow of Chelmsford Prison). Apart from details of himself and his wife, it mentioned their two sons who had died in the war. Alfred died in Alexandria (Egypt) and Joseph was killed in France.
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