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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: doktorb on Monday 20 October 08 19:19 BST (UK)

Title: doktorb defeats fourteen-nineteen !
Post by: doktorb on Monday 20 October 08 19:19 BST (UK)

In a move which has probably caused a good man to go home for a big cry, it seems my request for the brilliant fourteen-nineteen website to help with family research has ripped a hole in the space/time continuum.

According to the email I have just had back, following a month of research, the man who is recorded on the 1901census as a private in the RAMC...doesn't exist! He has left not so much as a fingerprint on any record, anywhere, ever. It's never happened in 2000 searches that someone has gone into thin air like this!

I am looking on the bright side; no news is good news, so my family tree becomes all the more interesting. I have a Private who doesn't exist! How brilliantly bizarre :)

Title: Re: doktorb defeats fourteen-nineteen !
Post by: Aniseed on Monday 20 October 08 22:42 BST (UK)

Perhaps he disappeared into the hole in the space/time continuum... [cue theme tune from The Twilight Zone]

Otherwise, perhaps he enlisted under an assumed name, sort of like joining the Foreign Legion to escape something from his past. How old was he on the 1901 census?

Title: Re: doktorb defeats fourteen-nineteen !
Post by: MarieC on Tuesday 21 October 08 12:55 BST (UK)

I think you take the record, doktorb!  A lot of us have people who weren't born or didn't die, but someone who didn't exist - that is something else!

I think Aniseed's suggestion is a good one.  Otherwise, there ought to be some record of him somewhere - birth, death or census!!!  ??? ???

I haven't heard of fourteen-nineteen - what is it?

MarieC

Title: Re: doktorb defeats fourteen-nineteen !
Post by: aghadowey on Tuesday 21 October 08 13:15 BST (UK)

Possibly birth was recorded under a different name (if illegitimate, mother remarried, was adopted, etc.) perhaps left the U.K. which is why you can't find any other trace of him.

Title: Re: doktorb defeats fourteen-nineteen !
Post by: Berlin-Bob on Tuesday 21 October 08 18:22 BST (UK)

Quote

I haven't heard of fourteen-nineteen - what is it?

Possibly the Great War Forum ?
http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/

Bob

Title: Re: doktorb defeats fourteen-nineteen !
Post by: doktorb on Tuesday 21 October 08 19:15 BST (UK)

fourteen-nineteen.net I /think/ it is. He makes every last possible check you could possibly make, it's very thorough indeed. Just a shame that after a month of checking, my rellie doesn't seem to exist!

I am going to make the best of this, though. A bit of ''little grey cells'' should find something...I /hope/

Title: Re: doktorb defeats fourteen-nineteen !
Post by: MarieC on Wednesday 22 October 08 11:15 BST (UK)

Thanks for the suggestion, Bob!

Good luck, doktorb!

MarieC