durham militia 1780's

[kylejustin]

i'm investigating a man i believe to be my ancestor, and on the christening of his son in 1780, berwick upon tweed, it says he was of the durham militia.

if this is my ancestor, he was in whitehaven, cumberland getting married in 1779, had a son christened in berwick, northumberland in 1780, and then my ancestor at barnard castle, durham in 1783.

how do i go about looking for militia records? there is nothing on FMP for him.

[Bertie]

Hi kylejustin

The records are likely held at TNA (Kew, London). See the following for a guide:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/research-guides/armed-forces-1522-1914.htm

Despite there not being a record of his attestation (the FMP series you looked at is a copy of the records held at TNA) there is (see 3.2. at the link above) the likelihood that the relevant Muster Rolls & Paylists do record him. These can be quite basic and were drawn up monthly so you may be albe to ID when he joined / left and they sometimes contain interesting information about locations etc. Sadly, these documents can only be consulted in person at Kew. There are people who will do a search for a cost (on a professional basis) but you may find SKS who goes there that might look them up for you if you provide the document refs

[kylejustin]

thank you bertie. i've looked for his name in the TNA catalogue, and nothing has come up. i also don't know anything about his service, so would not know where to start. i know he was the game keeper to the earl of zetland until his death in 1836.

[annswabey]

The Musters aren't name indexed so you wouldn't expect him to show up in the Catalogue

[Bertie]

Hi kylejustin - the militia records are not indexed or searchable by name so you will not find anything unless his attestation has survived (in your case it seems not).

What you should look for is under the Muster Books WO Series particularly the set relating to the Durham Militia (it's a while since I have looked at this and then the originals at Kew but they should be indexed in an easy manner as I found the ones I wanted).

Then once you have found the series relating to the Durham Militia you will find specific references by date order. That way you will know which muster books to consult.

Then the only way is to get a hold of the originals at Kew and look at them individually - most militias have several companies and the set of muster books tend to show them in company order with the Captain at the top then a listing of the Sergeants and then down to an alphabetical list of Privates. Sometimes additional information is shown such as where the militia was based or whatever but in my experience this is sparse.

So, once you have the muster books from a date you definitely know your man was in the militia you can work backwards / forwards by month to id start and finish dates.

The only other thing to say is that there were many members of the militias so if you have a reasonably common name you might just find more than one candidate who could fit - what helps here is if you know specific locations and dates that might correlate with where a particular company was or (even better) if a witness at the marriage was also in the Militia (thus helping to ID a specific company). On the other hand if you find only one person with that name enlisted - good news!

[kylejustin]

it's not a common name, so i should have no issues finding him if i ever get access to these records.

[clematised]

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=K2h6b2T0yJUC&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=durham+militia&source=bl&ots=isunlnDNYi&sig=COamFnnF7Jd4hgeu2m4ZRZwvahA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Q7hhUtK7IZTw0gWbpICoBw&ved=0CGYQ6AEwCDgK#v=onepage&q=durham%20militia&f=false

Its always worth a check on google books for something like this or even a google to see what's available

Edna

[kylejustin]

thankyou edna

[Lindsay]

The militia records are worth looking at if you ever get the chance. My 5xg-grandfather was in the militia for several years, and I was able to follow him round the country, see what he was paid, when he was ill etc.

[kylejustin]

i'm hoping they would be informative. asides from WWI there are only 2 military type occupations in the family, and those records built up a picture of those ancestors. would be great to do this with someone who had died in 1836!

[clematised]

https://familysearch.org/search/collection/2046942 looks like they only go from 1806 and these are on FMP

Edna

[kylejustin]

thanx edna but he isn't on the findmypast ones. i think he may have left the militia by 1806, his son's obit said he was game keeper to the earl for 4o something years.

[SmallTownGirl]

Kyle

I looked on the TNA website umpteen times, without any success, for info on my g.grandfather who was in the Marines. Then one day a couple of months ago, I typed "Nathan Gould Royal Marines" into Google and up came a link to some papers about him at TNA.

So, nil desperandum. That's what I say!

STG

Edited to add : And I've just found this posting from another forum, which might be of use/interest:

Another booklet I have is "Militia Lists and Musters, 1757-1876" by Jeremy
Gibson and Mervyn Medlycott, published by the Federation of Family History
Societies ISBN 1 872094 82 1. This lists available resources. I won't list
them all but the relevant ones are:

Durham Light Infantry Museum and Durham Art Gallery, Aykley Heads, Durham -
Militia Muster Roll 1795 Durham Militia [884/4]

PRO, Kew -
1st (South) Durham: 1780-1876 [WO 13/608-32]
2nd (North) Durham: 1853-1876 [WO 13/633-37]
Supplementary Militia: 1798-1816 [WO 13/2495]

So only a few documents survive from your period. I would suggest to start
with the DLI Museum to see if there are any specialist historians who can
help you. (Mervyn Medlycott is a specialist with Dorset connections, where
my Militiamen were.) Not a great help to you but I would not assume your
Thos. the elder was a military man - none of mine are. It is just down to
hard work and research!

[Bertie]

Hi STG - I agree the TNA search facility can be tricky. However, if you simply type in "Nathan Gould" (complete with the inverted commas) his record comes up straight away!

It is a good suggestion to try the DLI museum - the records however are at TNA.

As a little more help for kylejustin (from my previous post): under section 3.2. of the reference I linked, click on 'advanced search option' or select 'advanced search' from the home page (in small blue writing under the box at the top of the page); put in 'Durham' in 'keyword options' - 'all of these words' and put in 'WO 13' under 'search within' - 'enter a reference'. You can then sort by 'date - ascending'. I suspect among the more interesting records are:

WO 13/608 (as per previous post)
WO 13/2495 (ditto)

...but as you can see there are plenty of others which may also be of interest.

As a guess, this is up to a day's work at Kew to go through the actual docs. but this is entirely dependent on the number of docs. consulted and how quickly one can go through them!

It might be worth a try to ask someone who visits TNA whether they would do an initial search for you on some of the docs. listed and between specific dates. The other option is to hire someone to do this but the cost / benefit tradeoff can only be judged by how important the information is to you.

[SmallTownGirl]

> "... if you simply type in "Nathan Gould" ..... his record comes up straight away!"

Well, yes, it does NOW, but it didn't when I first started searching.

[kylejustin]

thank you both for the help, i will look into a researcher in the future.