Information on army & militia muster rolls - does it include wives?

[MaxD]

Josey

I’d say that the information others have given about the information (or lack of) in the muster rolls is indeed the situation.  Like most people I imagine, I have had occasion to look at only a handful but I have found none that do any more than list the soldiers “on the books” for the half year or quarter that the books cover. The National Archive guidance says that only after 1868 (don’t know the significance of the date) do some muster rolls have additional information about the wives and families – far too late for your man.

Highly likely that he went with the regiment in 1849 from Weedon.  As to whether the family were with him in India.  A lottery decided which half a dozen or so families could accompany the battalion overseas otherwise they were left behind.  Could the family be found in the 1851 UK census?

He and others due for discharge about the same time would return home on one of the ships plying back and forth taking/bringing soldiers to and from India.  Buttevant was the depot of the 87th.

The NTM rolls should show when he joined in the sense that his name would appear in one or other of the rolls you cite and in a later one there may be the annotation “died (date)” but the only way to establish this is to trawl the records.

While frustrating, it isn’t really unusual for army records to have little or nothing about the families.  They were after all records of the regiment not the man.  Even much later individual service records, where they survive, might list a marriage and the birth of children but this was not universally the case.

So not much further forward I’m afraid.

MaxD

[josey]

Thank you Max. I foresee a trip or two to Kew looming, plan add to it on to one of my fortnightly grandson sitting visits to London.

Thanks too for the info about when/how Philip would have returned to Britain before discharge.

As to the 1851, I have looked with - so far - no success but I suspect that if she didn't go to India, Anne + children would have returned to Ireland where, sadly, no censuses. I have yet to find the post birth histories of Mary 1832 and Julia 1849.

Josey