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Topics - jbml

Pages: [1] 2 3 4 ... 16
1
Essex Lookup Requests / Lookup Request ... Mary Spooner (formerly Knopp) ... buried 10 July 1785?
« on: Sunday 30 August 20 19:14 BST (UK)  »
It looks as thought Mary Spooner (formerly Knopp) may have been buried at St Martin's, Colchester on 10 July 1785.

Is anyone with access to the parish registers able to confirm?

Very grateful if you can, as well as passing on any additional information which the register might contain.

2
New Zealand Completed Requests / Passenger List - Wellington, arriving Cowan 17 February 1884 *COMPLETED*
« on: Saturday 29 August 20 09:35 BST (UK)  »
The ship Wellington sailed from England on 29 November 1883 and arrived in Cowan on 17 February 1884.

Its passengers included a Mrs Streat and her children (but not her husband, who needed to complete 30 years' service in a London brewery to qualify for his pension).

I BELIEVE that Mrs Streat's first name should be EITHER Mary or Elizabeth ... but I do not at present know which!

If some kind person who has access to the passenger list could have  quick look and let me know which I should be exceedingly grateful.

3
New Zealand Completed Requests / Marriage lookup ... Edgar King *COMPLETED*
« on: Saturday 29 August 20 09:17 BST (UK)  »
Edgar King, born circa 1813, sailed to New Zealand on the Wellington and landed at Auckland on 2 January 1882. Two of his children, Teresa Eve King (baptised 1866) and John King (born circa 1872) sailed with him.

Edgar died at about 7.30 pm on 29 April 1884, when he fell from the railway bridge over the Taieri River as he and his son John attempted to walk from Henley to Mosgiel in the dark. They had missed the last train from Henley to Dunedin, and were hoping to catch a later train at Mosgiel.

Newspaper reports speak of a "wife and seven children" who were left destitute by his death ... which implies that he probably married again soon after arriving in New Zealand, and that his new wife was probably a widow with children of her own (although it is of course possible that they were married during the voyage ... )

It is reported that at the time of his death, Edgar lived in St Andrew Street, Dunedin ... although this was not where he lived for the whole of his short time in New Zealand: on first arriving, he opened a sarsaparilla store at 96 Grey Street Auckland, and this is given as his address in a press report of 15 February 1882. This venture did not pay, and he went to work instead at the New Zealand Clothing Factory in Dunedin as a cutter (his old trade from when he lived in England). He left this employment a few weeks before his death, having become too old to work.

That's all I have on his time in New Zealand so far ... but if anyone is able to find a record of his marriage in New Zealand, I should be exceedingly grateful, as I do not have access to New Zealand records myself.






4
New Zealand Completed Requests / The "Wellington's" first voyage to New Zealand, 2 October 1881 - 2 January 1882
« on: Wednesday 26 August 20 12:41 BST (UK)  »
The three-master "Wellington", under Captain Cowan, sailed from London to Auckland in 90 days ... and it appears that my great great great grandfather Edgar King (alias Spooner, alias King-Spooner) was one of the passengers on that voyage.

Does anybody know where I can find a copy of her passenger list, so that I can see which other members of the family sailed with him?

5
Occupation Interests / Railway clerk on the Great Eastern Railway sent to Guildford in 1918??
« on: Wednesday 25 July 18 22:08 BST (UK)  »
This has been bugging me.

One of my Great Grandfathers was a clerk on the Great Eastern Railway, in the East End of London. He somehow managed to avoid service in the Great War (although don't ask me how ... some railwaymen were exempt from call up but surely not pen-pushers?), and towards the end of the war he is found, temporarily, in Guildford.

I know this because one of my Great Uncles was born in Guildford in 1918, at an address in Cemetery Road, although my Great Grandmother (who was the informant) still gives her East End address on the birth certificate. She was not, however, simply visiting in Guildford when she went into labour, because I also have a 1918 press report from the Surrey Advertiser of my Great Grandfather being fined 7/6 for cycling without a rear light, and his address is given in that report, and it is the same address in Cemetery Road which appears on my Great Uncle's birth certificate.

Soon after the end of the Great War, the family is back at the old address in the East End.

So why the temporary relocation to Guildford, which was never served by the Great Eastern Railway? I just don't get it. I mean, I know that the railways were all under the control of the Railway Executive for the duration of the war and a time afterwards, so I can quite see that key staff might be redeployed across company boundaries to meet urgent operational needs ... but clerks???

I simply can't make head or tail of it. So I'm opening it up as an open-ended discussion thread, to see if anyone else has any thoughts or ideas?

6
England / Non-conformist look-up request
« on: Wednesday 25 July 18 20:17 BST (UK)  »
RG4 / 1378

John Burrows and Eliza Burrows, both buried in Great Coggeshall, Essex in 1834


If anyone has access to this record I'd be very grateful for any information over and above that stated above.

7
World War One / Lookup Request - Thomas Robert Packman
« on: Monday 13 March 17 07:37 GMT (UK)  »
If anyone with access to the military records could do a quick lookup for me to let me know if there's anything worth seeing, or if this is one of those for which nothing worthwhile remains, I'd be ever so grateful.

Thomas Robert Packman
Royal Navy service number M 23475 (Po)
rank at death (15 July 1919): ERA 2c


8
WW1 In Memoriam / 15 July 1919. Thomas Robert PACKMAN. 32 or possibly 33. Royal Navy. HMS Myrtle
« on: Sunday 12 March 17 17:02 GMT (UK)  »
Thomas Robert Packman, son of Robert Packman (a lithographic printer) and Christine Packman (nee Wright) was born in 1886 (Registered London, Hackney 1886 Q3 volume 1B page 604).

He grew up in London, and as a young man he joined the City of London police. His grandfather Robert Packman had been a sergeant in the City of London Police and had raised a large family in Bell Square, Finsbury Park, so young Robert was evidently following in a family tradition. In the 1911 census he appears as a police constable living in a police section house at 1 Bridewell Place (RG14 PN1312 RG78 PN45 RD15 SD2 ED22 SN56).

In the Great War he served in the Royal Navy, rising to Chief Engine Room Artificer second class (service number M 23475, based at Portsmouth) and served on the Azalea class sloop HMS Myrtle (launched 11 October 1915; pennant number T.38 at launch, changed to T. 65 in January 1918).

Thomas lived to see the Armistice; but HMS Myrtle was one of the ships of the Royal Navy assigned to Operation Red Trek - the British intervention in the Russian Civil War. He may well have been a witness to the world's first offensive aircraft carrier operations: the raids on Kronstadt flown off HMS Vindictive, which arrived in the Gulf of Finland early in July 1919.

The fate of HMS Mrytle is best related in the words of the citation for the Albert Medal which was awarded to her commanding officer following her loss:

"On the 15th July, 1919, during minesweeping operations in the Baltic, four mines were swept up which HMS Myrtle, commanded by Lieutenant-Commander Scott, and another vessel were ordered to sink. During the operations the two vessels were mined, and HMS Myrtle immediately began to sink. So great was the force of the explosion that all hands in the engine room and after boiler room of the ship were killed with one exception, and many others of the crew were wounded. After the wounded had been successfully transferred to another vessel, the forepart of HMS Myrtle broke away and sank. Lieutenant-Commander Scott hearing that the fate of one of the crew of the Myrtle had not been definitely ascertained, gallantly returned alone to what was left of the sloop, which was drifting through the minefield, rolling heavily and burning fiercely, and regardless of the extreme risk which he ran, made a thorough search for the missing man, unfortunately without success." (London Gazette no, 31821, published 12 March 1920, page 3187).

The Albert Medal awarded to Lieutenant-Commander Scott is in the Imperial War Museum collection (OMD 1430).

Thomas Robert Packman would have been one of the men in the engine room who died in the initial blast, and is therefore unlikely to have been one of the three survivors of the Myrtle and the other ship lost that day, HMS Gentian, whose bodies were recovered and buried in Talinn.

The main part of the wreck of the Myrtle was located in 1937, and the bow section in 2010.

The casualties of Operation Red Trek are commemorated on a memorial in Portsmouth Cathedral unveiled in 2005; in the Church of the Holy Ghost in Tallinn; and in St Saviour's Church, Riga.

Thomas Robert Packman left a will, and the Probate Calendars contain the following entry:

"PACKMAN Thomas Robert of 231 Ramsay-road Forest Gate Essex E.R.A. R.N. died 15 July 1919 in Russia. Administration (with will) London 22 November to Christine Mary Packman (wife of Robert Packman). Effects £246 5s."

The personal representative was Thomas's mother, who lived until 1943. At the outbreak of the second world war her niece Winifred Mary Burrows (nee Packman) and her husband George Vincent Burrows moved to Ireland with their six youngest children, leaving a large house in Buckhurst Hill called "Ardmore House" (which had once been the private residence of Dr Barnado, and which had been visited by Gandhi in 1931). This house was occupied by a number of members of their wider family, including Christine Packman. Two years before she died, my father (her great great nephew) was born, and he too formed part of the extended family living at Ardmore.

Thomas Robert Packman was my first cousin three times removed, ascending.

9
World War One / Russian Intervention Memorial - Portsmouth Cathedral
« on: Sunday 12 March 17 16:32 GMT (UK)  »
I understand that a memorial to the casualties of the Russian Intervention was unveiled in Portsmouth Cathedral in 1905.

The 112 men commemorated (107 Royal Navy and 5 RAF) include my first cousin three times removed, Thomas Robert Packman, who died in the engine room of HMS Myrtle when it was mined on 15 July 1919.

Has anybody seen this memorial, and is it worth taking a trip to see it?

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