RootsChat.Com

Dear Annette
  Thank you for taking the time to write, I did wonder about the Canadian enlistment and whether he might have been too old at 42, so you are thinking the same.  Likewise, why he said he was single on his war record.  Very elusive man this, whatever I try I come up against a brick wall.
  I have asked the PRO to search under both surnames, and as Tom and Thomas, with no joy 1873-1875.  So I too was beginning to think of late that perhaps his registration had escaped the eyes of the authorities.
  I am this morning going to pay-as-you-go with Ancestry and hope to look at the Workhouse records, quite a few I'm told by others.  I must admit I was assuming this was a 'normal marriage' and so hadn't considered looking at other options.  I subscribe to findmypast, and a general search there had not brought forward any thing so far.
  Thanks again, Angela.

see note below, repeated

for Kissimmee
Yes still on line and still researching Bearman/Wade et al.  Sorry for delay but don't get chance to check message boards as often as should.  Angela.

I saved a Hereford Times article, dated Feb 21 1991, about him for some reason, and quote from some of it:

Robert Jones was a teenage hero of the Zulu War, fighting off the African hordes and suffering bullet and spear wounds.  Almost 20 years later a coroner's jury ruled that the Victoria Cross holder had taken his own life in a Herefordshire garden.  But was it suicide?  Still being fiercely defended in the Golden Valley village of Peterchurch today is the reputation for courage Jones earned on the dark continent.

Handed down from generation to generation has been the claim that Jones died in a tragic accident - a jolted gun succeeding where the warriors that were the pride of Zulu Chief Cetewayo had failed.

He won the VC in 1879 aged 19, he was of the 2nd Battalion 24 Foot, South Wales Borderers.

He died while employed by Mr De la Hay as a farm labourer. The vicar of the church, John de la Tour Davies has campaigned to have the suicide verdict quashed.  He claims that a vital piece of evidence was overlooked - Jones was carrying a box lock gun that could unintentionally be triggered if suddenly jarred.

He has a fine marble gravestone in Peterchurch, cared with devotion, and on Remembrance Sundays the Royal Legion lays a wreath at its foot.

[Wife's name Elizabeth].

Cannot find his marriage to Rosina Casebow.  Their son William Henry (or names reversed) born April 1912.
By 1916 Tom has enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces, and gives his birthday as 11th May, with one war record saying born Bristol, the other London.
The Pro's bmd's only have one Thomas listed, born 23rd May.
From war record we discovered he had two sisters - Mary Ann (now Mrs Spraggett) and Alice Maud, both living at a PO Bx address in Ontario.  Despite having 'wife' and son in 1912 he lists his sisters as his next of kin.
After contacting Dr. Barnardo's they advised the children were orphaned.  Thomas was 'kept by the family' and the sisters were sent to Canada.  They will not even say where the children were from.
Cannot locate in 1881 census index.  There is one possible Thomas, who's a year 'out' and he's with parents, but not sisters as above.
Any suggestions?