Who was Robert Pawley?

[Caluna]

St Andrew's Church at Sudbury, Middlesex (London Borough of Brent) currently has a project adding details to the names on its WW1 memorial. One - Robert Pawley -has so far defeated all attempts to identify him either in a wide variety of war records or in BMD records and censuses. Name variants and wildcards have been used in searches. A Pawley one-name study has been contacted but no reply has been received as yet. The only major source which has not yet been tried is local newspapers, which will take a long time to trawl through as Robert's death could have taken place at any time during the war. No parish magazines exist for that period. A number of people named Robert Pawley appear in war records, but there is nothing to link any of them with Sudbury. The situation is complicated by the fact that parish and local government boundaries have changed several times in that area, and that a lot of people were moving there just before WW1 as a lot of new housing was being built. Any suggestions for what to do next would be gratefully welcomed.

[jim1]

There were no hard & fast rules regarding who appeared on a War Memorial & the link to the town may be tenuous. There are only 2 R. Pawleys on the CWGC site but no way of knowing if either of them are him.
I know there were ex-soldiers who died in the 1920's who's names appear on Memorials.
I know not the answer you're looking for but without the name of the person who made the request it's a needle in a haystack.

[philipsearching]

I am having a similar problem with my local War Memorial.  Having eliminated the usual avenues (BMD, Census, Electoral Rolls), and knowing that many WW1 records were lost, I am left with local newspapers as my last option.

One thought: were there any PAWLEY families on the 1911 census or post-war electoral rolls for the area that could be linked (through earlier censuses) to a Robert?  It is possible that a relative (parent/sibling/widow) could have moved into the area and arranged for him to be added to their local memorial.

Another thought - FreeBMD lists only eight Robert PAWLEYs and five Robert PAULEYs born in England/Wales between 1860 and 1905.  Have you tried matching them against deaths on FreeBMD to see which of them can be immediately eliminated?

All the best.
Philip

[cath151]

On the 1939 register there is a "family" name Pawley (but quite a bit of crossing outs and other surnames) living in Sunbury  on Thames, Middlesex.
Can t quite work out where surname Pawley comes into it, though have found people on freebmd... perhaps others could have a look and see what they think
Cathy

ahhh...Sudbury not Sunbury...sorry