Second Chatham Depot Battalion Chatham Barracks Number 1

[jim1]

The names mentioned by Ken are there on page 1.Just listed as Army.
jim

[km1971]

Hi Griff

Sergeants and Corporals are not officers, so they are not listed in army lists. You need Ensigns, Lieutenants, Captains and above. You need to start at him and go back to the beginning if necessary.

Jim...thanks for pointing out that he was a Sgt Instructor in Bolton.

Griff... R means Rifle. The 14th Lancashire Rifle Volunteers were in Bolton, although by 1891 their official title was 2nd Volunteer Battalion of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment. In 1908 they became part of the territorials.

I was thinking that C meant Chatham, or Cinque Ports. Now I see is that C means Lancashire. So there has been a transcription error along the way.

Ken

[AndrewCundell]

Hiya!!

Just stumbled across the thread while looking for 'Second Chatham Depot Battalion Chatham Barracks Number 1' - I also have a 1861 Census question 

On RG 9 483 (page 10 of the census - line 10 -14) the Chapple family are listed.

J Chapple Private Army aged 40 born in Ireland
R Chapple Wife aged 29 born in Ireland
J Chapple son aged 8 born in Ireland
S Chapple daughter aged 3 born in Chatham, Kent
M A Chapple (Mary Ann) daughter aged 2 born in Gibraltar

I've done a magnitude of searching but keep coming up with multiple answers or none at all! 

If J Chapple was based in Gibraltar when Mary Ann was born, would it be possible to narrow down the regiment he was in and from your previous answer - would he have then gone on to India?

His eldest daughter (1 year older than Mary Ann) is listed as being born in Chatham, Kent - How long were they posted and would this possibly be his second stay in the barracks?

In later census searches for Mary Ann, she married a Michael G Gallagher and lives with an Uncle called John Frarey/ John Tracy (1891 and 1901).  I have taken this into account for R Chapple as a possible maiden name but still come up with nothing.

Absolutely anything to add to the tree would be greatly appreciated!

Thankyou!!

Andy C

[Andy J2022]

Hi Andy,

I hope you're looking forward to lots more searching. Let's assume that in order for Mary Ann to be 2 at the time of the 1861 census her birth date was somewhere between 7 April 1858 and 6 April 1859. During that period 7 different Battalions were stationed in Gibraltar. So starting in April 1858 they were (later titles in brackets):

2nd Bn 1st Foot (the Royal Scots)
25th Foot (the Kings Own Scottish Borderers)
31st Foot (the Huntingdonshire Regt)
48th Foot (the Northamptonshire Regt)

By Jun 1858 two more battalions had arrived:
2nd Bn 6th Foot (the Royal Warwickshire Regt)
2nd Bn 7th Foot (Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment))

In September 1858 the 31st Foot left for the Cape of Good Hope. The following month the 2nd Bn 1st Foot left for Hong Kong and the 2nd Bn 8th Foot (the King's) arrived. In December the 48th Foot departed for Calcutta.

So on 1 Jan 1859 the garrison consisted of
2nd Bn 6th Foot
2nd Bn 7th Foot
2nd Bn 8th Foot
25th Foot
and remained like that until June 1859 when the 100th Foot (Prince Regent's County of Dublin Regiment) arrived (having been reformed the previous year in Canada, so I think you can discount this as being J Chapple's regiment when the older sister was born).

I have left you the fun task of going back 18 - 30 months to look at where all those battalions were when the older sister was born in Chatham. But I can say that between January and June 1857 2/6th were in the Cape of Good Hope; 2/7th were in Aldershot; the 2/8th were in Bengal, the 25th in Manchester and the 31st in Malta.

The way you can find out who was where is to use the newspapers and search for 'Stations of the British Army'. The list for the whole Army was published every month during the nineteenth century and appeared in dozens of local papers.

Of course you may have to consider that J Chapple was with his regiment in Gibraltar when Mary Ann was born, but with the Depot two years earlier when the sister was born, rather than his regiment itself being in Chatham. The history of the 2nd Depot Battalion (Chatham) is complicated and I don't profess to know which regiments were served by it at that time. Sadly I don't think the muster rolls at TNA would be much use in this instance.

Good luck!

[Andy J2022]

Andy,

I forgot to add that your task might be a lot easier if you order Mary Ann's birth certificate. It's in the GRO Army Returns - births 1850-59 Gibraltar and it's line 31 page 945. Her surname is spelt Chappell. The certificate should tell you J's regiment. Familysearch have the event date 1850 but that's clearly wrong and is just the start of the period covered by the Chaplain's return.

[AndrewCundell]

Good Morning Andy

Amazing!!! Thankyou so much for all this! I just kept running into brick walls and was resigned to planning a trip to Kew to look at the Army Muster Rolls! This was will be much cheaper!!!

Once again, Thankyou for the huge pointers!!

Yours

Andy C

[Andy J2022]

I just kept running into brick walls and was resigned to planning a trip to Kew to look at the Army Muster Rolls!

Once you have his regiment, then the muster rolls may well answer the question about his earlier stay in Chatham. Given his age in 1861 he would no doubt have been thinking about his discharge assuming that he joined up when he was around 18 or 20. He could have been at the Depot as an instructor - a coveted job for older soldiers. That said, he was still only a Private so he might have had a chequered career which saw him reduced in rank. Alternatively he may have joined later than average. Men over 25 years of age were not supposed to be recruited but no doubt many lied about their age. Lots of men answered the call to enlist in 1854 to go to fight in the Crimea, following the so-called Pax Britannica from the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, during which the Army was severely reduced in size.