Battle of Poelcapelle, 9 October 1917

For the last month I have been attempting to Tweet links to the Imperial War Museum's website, the Lives of the First World War along with appropriate photos of the men or of memorials where they are Remembered, for each of the 221 Barnsley men who lost their lives in the Battles of Third Ypres. I am hoping to Tweet most of the names on the 100th anniversary of the day the individual man fell. Although the whole campaign is now often called Passchendaele that name actually specifically refers to two battles towards the end of the period covered. For more information I suggest you go to the Long, Long Trail website's very comprehensive page on the Battles.
 

Community Page on Lives of The First World War

I have created a Community on Lives to gather together all these men's stories. As a past volunteer for the Barnsley War Memorials Project I have access to their constantly updated master spreadsheet, which will be the basis for the forthcoming WW1 Roll of Honour. This provided me with the names, regiments and service numbers of the 221 men who fell or were assumed to have fallen between 31 July 1917 and 10 November 1917. 

The Barnsley War Memorials Project are also very fortunate to have been given privileged access to the Barnsley Chronicle from August 1914 to the end of 1918 as part of their mini-project to index all mentions of soldiers in the newspapers. This project has now been completed thanks to the efforts of over a dozen volunteers from all over South Yorkshire. The resulting index is available at Barnsley Archives, in both paper format and as a series of searchable spreadsheets. Permission was also given for photos of the men from the Barnsley Chronicle and the other local newspapers with Barnsley coverage to be used in the Roll of Honour project and on Lives of the First World War. Transcripts of some obituaries and death notices can also be found on Lives, but if you want the images of those for your ancestors you will need to visit Barnsley Archives yourself (please do, they need our support to keep operating the hours they are currently open) and search the index for the reference before printing out your own image from the digital copies of the Barnsley Chronicle. Only 55p an A4 sheet last time I visited, a bargain!  

The Barnsley Independent and South Yorkshire Times are also available, on microfilm and un-indexed I'm afraid, but if you know the date of death of your WW1 ancestor it is relatively easy to go to the right part of the newspapers to do a search. If you check the Chronicle index first you may get an idea of when news of your ancestor's death reached Barnsley. It could sometimes takes months for the families to be informed that a man was now officially presumed dead, rather than missing. Copies of articles from these newspapers can also be printed out.

Map of front line approaching Poelcapelle
on 26 Sept 1917 (from the FFFAIF blog)

The Battle of Poelcapelle

I has shocked to find that out of the 221 Barnsley connected men who fell during the Battles of Third Ypres 46 of them were lost on one day, 9 October 1917.  This was the Battle of Poelcapelle. You can find a detailed description on Wikipedia. It was the classic attack through heavy mud, with too little artillery support to create an effective creeping barrage which in any case soon became too fast for the advancing soldiers to keep up with.

The majority of Barnsley's soldiers in this Battle were from the 1st/4th, 1st/5th and 6th Battalions of the York and Lancaster Regiment, who were in the 49th (West Riding) Division, II Anzac Corps and the 11th (Northern) Division, XVIII Corps. In the map above you can see these two Corps are in the centre of the advance. Ten of the fallen were in the 1st/5th Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment who were also in the 49th (West Riding) Division.

Tyne Cot Memorial from the CWGC

All but three of the 46 of the Barnsley men lost on 9 October 1917 are remembered on the Tyne Cot Memorial. This means that they have no known grave. Two of the exceptions, who were each buried in cemeteries behind the British lines, are noted as having died of wounds, suggesting they had been injured prior to the 9th and did not take part in this particular battle. The remains of the third man, John Costello, were found after the war, identified by his disc, and reburied in Cement House Cemetery near Langemarck along with a number of unidentified men found nearby.

The OH and I visited Tyne Cot in 2009. The long memorial wall sweeps around the top of the site and commemorates nearly 35,000 men who fell in the Ypres salient after 17 August 1917. Men who fell prior to this date are remembered on the Menin Gate.

I hope I will at least be able to add some family detail, plus photos and transcriptions from the Barnsley Chronicle where available, to each of these 46 men before the centenary of their deaths in October. However it is unlikely that I will be able to Tweet them all individually on the day as I would have wished, there are just too many. But I will share my list and with the information on that anyone can look up their stories on Lives of the First World War and their commemorative information on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website.

The IWM website - Lives of the First World War

Did your WW1 ancestor serve in any of the Battalions I have mentioned? Why not look them up on Lives of the First World War and add your family stories and photos to the site. It is absolutely free to use to add this kind of thing, the paywall only comes into play if you want to search the records they have made available, and if you have a subscription to Ancestry or Find My Past you probably have access to these already or you could access them for free in Barnsley (Ancestry) and Sheffield (Find My Past) libraries. It is not just men who were killed who are Remembered on Lives, anyone who was affected by the war may already be included. If your soldier, sailor, airman, nurse, munitions worker or civilian casualty or other WW1 ancestor is not yet named on the site you can ask for them to be added by submitting a request to the Support Forum.

Lest We Forget.

When your Name is Not your Name?

This morning  I read, with interest, a Guardian item on the difficulties one lady was having with her bank over her use of both maiden and married names.

The Guardian 28 August 2017

My case is slightly different, however my names have caused me some difficulties over the years, and more particularly in the last few weeks.

I am commonly known by my middle name, and have been all my life. Why my parents chose to register my name (and have me baptised) as A. L. and then called me L. is a mystery, my 79 year old mum cannot remember any particular reason for their decision. The only places where I am accustomed to being addressed as A. are hospitals and the Student Loans Company (with whom I have an even more complex name problem at the moment). Even my GP calls me L. by the simple expedient of underlining that name on my notes or more recently by entering my preferred name in a field for that purpose on their computer system.

A few years ago I started to give talks to small church and community groups on local and family history. I used L. (surname) on my leaflets and my blog advertising my talks. I was frequently paid by cheque, and often these cheques had been made out in advance because of difficulties within the group in getting multiple signatories together. This meant that it was difficult to ask for a cheque to be rewritten if it was directed to me as L. (surname) rather than A. (surname). Sadly, due to my progressively worsening health, I can no longer give the talks as I cannot guarantee being well enough on a particular day to fulfill my commitments. I do miss the social interaction and the stimulus of having to prepare new material.

Santander refused to accept cheques written to me as L. (surname) a few years ago, despite my joint bank account with my husband being in my full name and my driving licence, with photo id also displaying my full name. I now pay cheques in my middle name into my individual Post Office account, set up (after some struggle) when I left work due to my ill health and needed an accessible bank near our home. Because the Post Office staff in the little suburb where we live recognise me and accept my explanation for the occasional cheque directed to L. (surname) I have had no problems with these cheques being returned.

I now ask my mum to write cheques to us in my husband's name rather than mine (she has an old fashioned conviction that a man should always appear to pay in restaurants even though it is her intention to remburse us as soon as she gets home) in order to avoid difficulties with Santander. She always calls me L. and writing a cheque to me as A. seems a bit odd and unnecessary to her. I even request that any Christmas gift cheques are addressed to him to avoid the possibility of them being returned. It does make me feel very much like an adjunct to my husband. Which is ironic considering the situation with my surname.

My difficulties with the Student Loans Company revolve around my surname rather than my forenames. I confess that I just let them call me A. It is easier.

In 1985 I married for the first time, in 1992 I divorced and changed my name to my mother's maiden name, carefully chosen to have meaning to me, but to be different to both my maiden and married names. In 2004 I remarried but kept my own name with my second husband's full agreement. One of my reasons for this was that my professional qualification was in my chosen name, and my subsequent Open University study and qualifications were all in that name.

I did have a passport for a period while I was working and could afford to go on holidays abroad, which was obtained in 2002 in my chosen name. I do not remember having any difficulty getting that. I had old passports in my maiden and married names which presumably served to confirm my identity. Unfortunately for me this passport has long expired. Apparently the reason I was able to get Student Finance for my PGCE in 2011 without any difficulty (I was trying to retrain as an IT teacher to the elderly, a job that might have allowed me to continue working part-time) was because my passport was then still in date,

This year's application for Student Finance to do a Distance Learning MA in the History of Britain and the First World War with the University of Wolverhampton, has been rejected because I no longer have a valid passport. I have provided my birth certificate and my statutory declaration (my name change document from 1992), but now they want my marriage certificate from 1985 as well. They do not care a fig that I am married to an entirely different man now as I did not take his name. A suitably qualified friend has filled out the necessary form to confirm I am who my birth certificate says I am, but this is apparently not enough.

I was told, during a long phone call (whilst being addressed as A.), that they need me to prove the link between my birth name and my first married name. This, despite me having the same account with them as I had when I first applied for Student Finance during my Radiography training (1990-1993) under my first married name, and having shown both my birth certificate and marriage certificate to the admin staff at the then North Trent School of Radiography (which, ironically changed its name twice whilst I was there, firstly to the Sheffield City Polytechnic and then to the Sheffield Hallam University!) From the dates I give you can deduce that I divorced and chose my current name whilst undertaking that study, and having informed all the necessary authorities my final certificate was issued in my chosen name. The same one I now have and retained on my second marriage to avoid difficulties!

The Student Finance people can apparently see that I had a passport in 2011, that I was called by a different name when I first registered with them in 1990, and that I have now produced my birth certificate to them on at least three separate occasions. I have also supported both my children's applications to them for their respective university study, using the same account reference. This will have involved providing them with financial information and details of my employment.

I have sent away for a copy of my 1985 marriage certificate, which has cost me £9.25. It will not arrive in the post for another week. Then I have to send it to the Student Finance people and wait goodness knows how long for them to cogitate on it.

Names. Do we own them? Even if we choose them ourselves in order to demonstrate a break with the past they still come with all the baggage of our previous history. Why is a passport so superior a document for proving who you are? I have had my photo id driving licence for many years and that is accepted as final by most institutions. But not the Student Finance people of course.

I don't write blog posts very often these days, but this situation has me very annoyed. This post will serve as a record of the situation that I can look back on in years to come and laugh. Well, I can always hope.

Thank you for reading, I welcome comments, but I do moderate them to avoid spam so they might take a day or so to appear.

World War One Soldiers' Story - Arthur and Spence Walton

Some days I tend to 'go off down a rabbit hole' in my WW1 soldiers research.  That's what one of my colleagues on the Remote Volunteers team for the Imperial War Museum's Lives of the First World War website calls it when we get distracted by a particular man or woman and spend hours on them instead of getting on with our standard work. 

At the moment I am fluctuating between Tweeting a few details of each Barnsley connected man who fell during the Battle of Third Ypres, commonly known as Passchendaele, on the 100th anniversary of the day they died, and trying to research a batch of men buried in France between 31 July 1917 and 2 November 1917 to see if any of them might have been wounded in Belgium, but transported to a hospital in France before they died.

The Passchendaele at Home project is a similar initiative.  They are asking schools and community groups to look for men buried in the UK who were wounded at 3rd Ypres. I have checked 15 Barnsley men who might have fulfilled these criteria, but only one seems to fit. He is buried at Darfield, so I have passed his name onto the Friends of Darfield Churchyard who are going to take up the research and hopefully carry out some form of commemoration on the 100th anniversary of his death in September this year.

So far, out of my list of 44 Barnsley men buried in France I have ruled out 16.  It is a complicated process requiring you to find out where his battalion was serving when he was wounded. The Long, Long Trail website is particularly useful for this as it lists which Division a battalion was in at any particular time and then you can cross reference that with the battles in which each Division was involved.

Yesterday morning I started work on Private Arthur Walton 13/671 in the 2nd Battalion York and Lancaster Regiment at his death in France on 8 September 1917. He is buried in St Patrick's Cemetery at Loos. We think he is the man remembered on the Roll of Honour at the Wesleyan Methodist Church at Stairfoot, Barnsley and on the WW1 memorial plaque in Christ Church, Ardsley. The date given on the RoH is one day out (September 9th 1917), but the Battalion fits and he is the only Arthur Walton in the Y&L to die any time around September 1917.

Enlarged snip from the Stairfoot Wesleyan Methodist RoH

In addition I have discovered that Spence Walton, named below Arthur on the RoH, did definitely live at 24 Industry Road, Stairfoot in 1915. He is named in the Electoral Register at that address.  Industry Road is immediately adjacent to the Wesleyan Chapel on old maps of the area. Spence also served in the York and Lancaster Regiment, Private 3/3864 in the 8th Battalion at the time his medals were awarded, which tallies with the detail on the RoH, although he seems to have become a Lance Corporal.  I assume Spence asked for Arthur's name to be included on the RoH.

Arthur Walton's Service Records have not survived, but I suspect that he initially enlisted in the 13th Battalion Y&L at Barnsley (Soldiers Died in the Great War says he enlisted at Barnsley) and then was transferred to the 2nd Battalion, possibly after being wounded or sick and having some time away from the front line.  The Long, Long Trail website says that the 2nd Battalion Y&L were in the 6th Division and in 1917 the took part in the Battle of Hill 70 (near Loos on 15th to 25th August 1917) and the Cambrai operations (20th November 1917 to 30th December 1917). Neither of these were part of the Battle of 3rd Ypres in Flanders, and neither took place during the time period in which we are interested so Arthur's death, "By Aerial Torpedo", if you are having trouble reading the rather fuzzy snip above, must have been a random occurrence whilst his battalion was working at or near the front, maybe in support or on transport duties.

Arthur's wife Eliza (nee Fisher) had remarried by the time her details are recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Arthur and Eliza had married in Castleford on 26th March 1910 and had one child, John Thomas Walton, aged 7 months, listed in the 1911 census. It seems likely that four other Walton children born in Pontefract with the mother's maiden name Fisher, also belonged to the couple. These were George Arthur Walton b.1912, Martha Ann Walton b.1913, Arthur Walton b.1914 and David Walton b.1916.  As Eliza was left a widow with up to four small children it is no surprise to me that she remarried so quickly. She and Joseph Garforth married in Q4 1918 in the Pontefract Registration District.

The location of Hill 70 does fit with Arthur being buried at Loos in September 1917. So not a Passchendaele man then. Tick him off the list and move on.

Well, that was the plan, but along the way I had become quite involved in finding out about Spence Walton and his connection to Barnsley.  

The older generation of the Walton family were living in Castleford in the 1891 and 1901 census returns. Harry Walton (of full age) and Annie Wright (aged 17), had married on 12th April 1879 at Drax Parish Church in the Selby Registration District. Their first child Spence, was born in the same Quarter, also in Selby RD. He was baptised on 6th July (when a birth date of 8th June is noted) at Carlton near Selby. So a bit of a hurried marriage then!

Snip of the 1901 census for Harry Walton's family in Castleford

By 1901 Harry and Annie have 8 children living with them at 26 Chapel Street in Castleford. Harry is a Colliery Surface Man, eldest son Spence, aged 21, is a Coal Miner Hewer and Arthur, aged 14, has no occupation declared.  There must have been great changes for the family over the next ten years as in the 1911 census Harry Walton is a widower declaring he is the uncle of the householder, Robert Wright, at 2 St Michael's Place, Rotherham.  A relative of his wife's maybe? Harry only has one child living with him, his second youngest daughter Martha, now aged 18. 

I have found a possible death for an Annie Walton, in 1905 in Castleford but her age at death is out by two years compared to the ages given on the census returns for Harry's wife. A final child to the couple may have been born and died aged 8 months as I have found the burial record for a Harry Walton in Castleford New Cemetery (while I was looking for Annie) in MQ 1902 which tallies with the birth of a child of the same name, with mother's maiden name Wright in Q3 1901. Having had at least nine children (and there may have been more who died young) it is not surprising that Annie was only in her 40s when she died. 

Hopefully Annie was able to enjoy the marriage of her eldest son in 1901. 

Spence Walton had married Emma Caroline Legg on 12 May 1901 in Castleford. In the 1911 census they are living at 4 Granville Street, Cutsyke, Castleford and despite being married 10 years only declare one child, a daughter, Emily who appears to have been born BEFORE their marriage as she is 13 years old at this point. The birth place of Emma and her daughter are both Fareham in Hampshire, so maybe Emily is Emma's illegitimate daughter and Spence has adopted her.  

I do know that when Emily Beatrice Walton, aged 19, gets married in Darfield Parish Church on Christmas Day 1916 to James E Garner, she declares her father to be Spence Walton, who is at that time "On Active Service". A search of the electoral registers shows that Spence was registered at 34 New Street in Darfield in 1918, when he was listed as an Absent Voter (Naval or Military). 

Sadly the Ardsley Cemetery burial registers show that Spence's wife Emma was buried on 26 September 1915 from 24 Industry Road. In the same grave is a 10 month child, Harold Walton, buried on 11 September 1915 from the same address.  Had Spence and Emma had a child together at last, only to see him die in infancy? Without finding a birth registration that fits it is impossible to say.  The only Harold Walton that is born in the area is an illegitimate child in the Rotherham RD in Q4 1914. Could this be a child of Emily Beatrice Walton who would have been about 17 years old at the time? Also in the grave is a James Spence Garner, aged 23 months, buried from 26 New Street in Darfield in March 1919. This must be a child of Emily and her husband James Garner.

Earlier I used the 1915 Electoral Register earlier to show that Spence Walton was at 24 Industry Road in Stairfoot in 1915. Interestingly at 18 Industry Road in the same year the occupant is a Thomas Walton.  Spence and Arthur had a brother Thomas who fell between them in age. Could this be the same man?

A Thomas Walton whose father's name was Harry, married Elizabeth Firth on 25th June 1905 at All Saints Church, in Castleford.  In 1911 they living at 10 High Street, High Town, Castleford and have two children, Lillie aged 5 and Harry aged 2. This last seems to confirm that I have the correct family. The census notes that little Harry was born in Rotherham and a search of the Yorkshire Baptisms on Find My Past turned up a record for Harry Walton born 11 June 1908, baptised 5th July, son of Thomas and Elizabeth living at 4 Charles Street. Thomas' occupation was Miner.  Unfortunately Barnsley baptisms beyond 1910 are not available online so I cannot check whether three births registered in Barnsley between 1914 and 1920 to surname Walton, mother's maiden name Firth are for this couple, but they do seem to fit especially as the child born in 1914 is named Thomas (for his father?)

Two snips from the 1918 Electoral Register for Darfield (from Ancestry & FMP)

In the 1918 Electoral Register for Darfield on Ancestry I was able to find a Thomas and Elizabeth Walton living at 34 New Street.  Previously in a different section of the 1918 Electoral Register, which I had found on Find My Past, I had discovered Spence Walton registered as living at 34 New Street, Darfield and absent from home as a Naval or Military voter. (I am assuming the MN instead of the usual NM is a typo as I can find no mention of that abbreviation at the start of the volume.) So the two brothers Walton appear to be living at the same address in Darfield in 1918, or at least Spence is registered to the address at which his brother lives. Bearing in mind that his wife had passed away in 1915 and that his only child had married in 1916, maybe Spence had no particular home address of his own by then.

So, to conclude, this rabbit hole was very deep and it took me most of yesterday to dig myself out of it!  Arthur Walton somehow made his way from Castleford to Barnsley where we know at least one of his brothers (Spence) was living in 1915.  The 13th Y&L recruited in Barnsley in the autumn of 1914 but did not go overseas until the end of 1915, arriving in France in April 1916. As Arthur and Eliza appear to have a child born in late 1916 (David b.Q4 1916) that suggests Arthur was at home sometime in early 1916. (Dare I say it? If it was his child - sorry but I have to keep my mind open about these things.) We know Arthur transferred to the 2nd Battalion of the Y&L before his death in September 1917; transfers often happened after a period away from the original battalion, usually through wounds or sickness. This could be when Arthur was in England in early 1916.  I have shown proof that his brothers Spence and Thomas were both registered in Darfield in 1918, and probably both lived on Industry Road in Stairfoot in 1915. The names for the Stairfoot Wesleyan Roll of Honour were collected in 1917 (first version, see newspaper cutting) and probably updated in 1918 and it includes men who survived the war. It seems reasonable that when approached (or when the family became aware of the appeal for names) either Spence or Thomas may have asked that Arthur be included in the RoH, especially as he enlisted in a Barnsley Battalion, in Barnsley.

Thank you for reading - writing this all out has, as usual, helped me to focus my thoughts on Arthur Walton's life and family and I am pleased that I have discovered a possible reason why he is remembered on two memorials in Barnsley.