RootsChat.Com

Hello everyone,

Firstly, can I please just say a sincere thank you to everyone who has responded to this thread until now and to those who have messaged me privately to send on your stories/memories/photographs. I am currently away for the weekend but I wanted to check-in so that you all don't think I'm ignoring you. I'm truly thankful that so many of you have shared stories that are so personal so please accept my humble thanks.

I am having a meeting with my head of department next week to finalise our curriculum plan for Term 2 (when we teach WW1) and I will use these stories as sources to inform our lessons and PowerPoints. I will also be able to read them in more detail and respond to PMs once I have done this.

I've had a lot of responses so please accept my apologies if I don't respond right away.

Thanks again - my students are going to find this all extremely useful and informative.

MattR

Hello Rootschat,

As some of you may already know, I am a History teacher working in a secondary school in the East Midlands.

I have recently been asked by my Head of Department to take a lead on planning and resourcing our WW1 Scheme of Learning and I am pivoting towards a study of how the First World War impacted on ordinary people, e.g., the soldiers who fought in it and the families who lived it.

As part of this, I intend on using real-life examples of families during this conflict as well as experiences and stories by ordinary men on the front lines in extraordinary circumstances. My philosophy when teaching History is to make it as relevant and as powerful as possible to engage students' understanding.

In this vein, I have a polite request. If any of you have any stories or photographs of First World War soldiers/families that you would like to be incorporated into my lessons then I would love to hear from you, either publicly or privately.

I'd like to stress that as a teacher I will be making no profit from such work and if chatters wish, I'd be more than happy to share the lesson PowerPoints so that you can see how I have your family's stories of sacrifice to bring history alive for the next generation.

I hope that admin can accommodate this request; I don't believe such a request has been made before and I'd love to have real, authentic experiences of ordinary people during this time to share.

I'm looking for the following in particular, including images if they are available:

- Stories of loss on the front. Did your ancestor serve with friends who died in service?
- Stories of heroism or humanity shown on the battlefield, whether it be with friends, comrades or perhaps even the enemy?
- Stories of men who were taken as Prisoners of War.
- Stories of how families struggled back home.
- Stories of women who worked in munitions factories or who drove the ambulances near the front lines.
- Stories of soldiers who married their nurses.
- Stories of families losing more than one son/brother to the war and of course the awful stories of battle and warfare that the men experienced.
- Stories about soldiers being punished or tried for what the army deemed as cowardice.

I promise to treat all of the above with the respect and sensitivity they deserve. They are, after all, our family history. I'll be sharing the story of my great gran's cousin Peter who signed up with his friend; they had consecutive army numbers and served in the same machine gun battery, only to be killed on The Somme 24 hours apart.

Please reply or drop me a message if you are interested!

Kind regards,
Matt

Blimey - I've just come back to this after receiving a notification about a reply and I am quite pleasantly surprised!

I had completely forgotten about this thread, hence why I have not responded, so to both jbml and Usagi, I apologise for the silence.

Usagi: it is fantastic to see that you have acquired a Robert Moore token - what a find, especially in knowing it is as old as we believe (1660s!) I'm excited to see one, so thank you for sharing your photo!

jbml: I apologise to you in particular for my seeming ignorance and lack of response. This must have simply passed me by and I have not looked at this branch for many years now. However, in spite of that, I did find Robert's baptism, not in 1655 as estimated but actually in 1646. He was the son of John Moore and I know nothing about John or any other family. However, Robert did not marry until 1682 which would explain why these tokens did not bear the name of a spouse. However, it is still a possibility the tokens were issued by an uncle I suppose! Thank you for your reply and advice, albeit 13 years late!

Admittedly, I'm pleasantly surprised by a return to this thread and might have to dust off the old Moore family tree and taken another look at it now!

Kind regards,
Matt.

Hello both,

Thank you for your responses to my query!

Ellen Owens was born in Downpatrick in 1876 and was baptised there 30/8/1876. As far as I can make out, she then moved with her family to Scotland in 1884 where she married twice before dying in 1933. The 1891 census showing her in Scotland is the one you have found, Millie!

i'm trying to think of why the birth of one child may not be registered when those before and after her were. Unless of course, she was adopted ...

Thank you both for your help. I knew I wasn't going spare!

Oh...maybe I have been missing something. None of my lot have popped up!