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Sarah White please if you are still able to provide further information for the names on this list.  Thanks so much.  Particularly hoping she proves to be the wife of William White and dying somewhere between 1836 and 1851 possibly in the Knowle area.

We have a 10+ year brick wall with this one!

We have Samuel Motteram (born to who knows whom c. 1754 who knows where!) marrying Penelope Rumble (born 1763 in Therfield Herts to Francis & Frances Rumble) in Duffield 7/9/1785.  They were both apparently of the parish and both unmarried at the time.  Samuel moved his family down to Therfield at the end of 1790 (wife Penelope, daughter Elizabeth aged about 2 and son Francis one month old).  He survived a settlement order to remove them all back to Duffield and stayed in Therfield becoming the miller at Reed Mill half way between Therfield & Barkway.

I seem to remember about 5 years ago finding online a reference to an Elizabeth MOTTRUM or MOTTROM or some such variant being baptised in Duffield, Derbys in 1787 to Samuel.  I can't find it anywhere any more.  I have a vague recollectin that it might have been something like a Philimores or Pallots Baptism transcription but I'm not sure that makes sense.  Unfortunatly I was very new to family history research then and hadn't learnt to make a note of every URL where I found something useful!  We live & learn (hopefully!).

Can anyone help me with this please?  I have been in touch with the Derbys record office a few times over the last 6 years or so and they haven't found much but then I couldn't afford to pay for much more than 30 mins of their research at a time.

We have no idea where Samuel came from.  We've always thought that it was from the Mottram area in Cheshire originally but then red herrings like the children's names including a Deborah (and that sort of name for the Mottrams being in Lincs) or lots of Mottrams in Staffs (and the Mottram area having been in the Lichfield Diocese for some time in previous centuries) crop up.  It might be that he originally came from Derby itself.  There were seem to have been some Mottrams there at that time.

If it helps at all, Penelope & Samuel had the following children:
Elizabeth born Duffield c. 1787
Francis born 1790 Duffield and baptised Therfield 1791 - named after his mother's father (Rumble family)
Samuel baptised Therfield 1791 (presumably named after his father - Mottram family)
John bapt'd Therfield 1793
Joseph bapt'd Therfield 1795
William bapt'd Therfield 1797
Deborah bapt'd Therfield 1799
Joanna bapt'd Therfield 1801
Edith bapt'd Therfield 1804
Frances bapt'd Therfield 1807 (presumably after her mother's mother - Rumble family)

If anyone can help with anything about this family we would all be so grateful.  These Mottrams did their level best to set about populating most of that part of Hertfordshire in the 19th century taking on all sorts of trades, so it would be good to find their roots.

Many thanks,
Ruth

This is amazingly precise and so helpful.  Thank you so much.  I'm very gateful to you.  This is just the kind of specific information I was having pipe dreams about receiving so never expected anything as detailed as this.  You're a star. 

And yes please ... I would very much like a photo if you can manage it without too much inconvenience to yourself.  I'll send a PM.

Just as a matter of interest, was this information from the regimental diary or something like that?  I'm wondering where this information is in case that's the kind of record I need to try to find for my other great uncles' war deaths.

I shall be googling all sorts of things now using this information you've given me.

Thanks again - very much appreciated.
Ruth

Oooh!  Thank you very much indeed.

Very clever of you to recognise the cap badge.  I couldn't make anything out on it at all!

That is very helpful thank you.  Is there anything to give us any kind of clue as to which regiment he would have been attached to and whether this uniform is from the earlier or latter part of the war?

I'm assuming that it would have been earlier as you've worked out that he was only a corporal and his medal card said that he was a sargeant.

Any thoughts?  I'd love to know where he served.  It would be quite an irony if he was in the same MGC that my great Uncle was in (54th coy and a completely different side of the family).

Thank you very much indeed for your help.
Ruth

Thank you to all who have given me such valuable information about my other two great uncles (this man's brothers - Henry Richard Hosken & George James Hosken).

I'd really appreciate any help that anyone can give me with this man's regiment and the possible battle that resulted in his death.

William Hosken was born c. 1889/90 and went to New Zealand in about 1912 to try his hand at farming.  He came back to Britain when war was declared and joined up as a rifleman with the London Regiment (Queen's Westminster Rifles) 2nd/16th bn regimental no 5367. 552374 and was a Private.

He is commemorated at the Karasouli Military Cemetery in Greece.

Does anyone know anything about this regiment and battalion and does anyone perhaps have an idea of the battle that might have been fought by them that would lead to his death 18/3/1917?

Family legend has it that he was in the camp with his younger brother Edgar (my grandfather) and a shell burst in the camp killing William and injuring Edgar .

Edgar's medal card seems to imply that Edgar enlisted in the same battalion as his older brother William 2nd/16th London Regiment (Rifles) and that Edgar was a private who was sent to France in June 1916.  At some point he must have returned to retrain at officers training camp in Cambridge.  I have a letter dated 16/1/1918 from him that is addressed as Cadet Edgar Hosken, A coy no. 2 O.E.B. (I think those are the abbreviations - hard to read) at Queen's College, Cambridge.  I then have his commission dated 12/6/1918 for 2nd Lt Territorials of 15th County of London battalion London Regiment (Prince of Wales own Rifles).

So I'm assuming that he did get invalided out of the army in March 1917 when he was supposedly injured by the same shell as killed his brother William (who died 18/3/1917) but that they had been posted away from France by then - somewhere around the Salonika region or maybe even as far as Palestine to agree with family legend) and that's why William was buried in Karasouli Cemetery in Greece.

I suppose that Edgar then recovered from his injuries and retrained to take a commission in the 15th London Regt (Prince of Wales own Rifles) and went out somewhere or other - maybe France again - not sure where this regiment went in June 1918 and then managed to stay alive long enough to the end of the war to come back and marry my grandmother and continue the family line!

So any information on either of those regiments and battles would be excellent.

Very sorry to bore you with all the details but looking at all the different documentation does make it feel rather like detective work (and it's always good to have another pair of eyes or two to look over such thoughts to confirm them or to find any mistakes in them).

Thank you very much indeed for all your help and kind assistance - very much appreciated.
Ruth

I should have found all this so much easier if I'd just asked my grandfather but he died when I was only 8 so I wasn't really old enough to think of these things then!