A Scot in the 29th Regiment of Foot

[mnj897]

I have recently been to the National Archives where I tracked down the miliary service record of my 3g grandfather, John Imray.  I knew from his death entry and from a number of census listings that he was a Chelsea Pensioner and, apart from his army sevice, he lived near Banchory, Kincardinshire in the North East of Scotland.

I was surprised, therefore, to find out that he was enlisted into and spent his military service with the 29th Regiment of Foot which later became the Worcestershire Regiment.  Can anyone throw some light on why the 29th of Foot would have been recruiting in the North East of Scotland in 1812?

Details of his service are as follows:

Enlisted into 29th Regiment of Foot , aged 21, on 27 April 1812 at Aberdeen.

Service:  Spain (1 year), Gibralter (?) (4 months), North America (11 months), France (3 years, 5 months).  Remainder of service in England and Ireland.

Discharged at his own request in Ireland on 23 July/14 Aug 1833. 

Total length of service - 21 years, 110 days.

He was born around 1792 and died in 1863.

He received no promotion, ending his military career as he began, as a private soldier.  Was this common at that time?

[Mean_genie]

Soldiers turn up in quite surprising regiments sometimes, and the Scots, like the Irish, get everywhere! It probably depends on which regiment was recruiting locally when he decided to join up, and as you can see from his service, regiments moved around a lot.

I have a couple of Irish ancestors who were in the army, one of them moved to Scotland and joined a Highland regiment - in Dunbartonshire! The other one was in the East Kent Regiment. My Scottish soldier ancestor was in the Shropshire Regiment.

None of them rose above the rank of private, although none served for as long as your man.

Mean_genie 

[wyndham]

mnj897

It is not clear from your posting whether you have looked into the 29th/Worcestershires but they have an excellent web-site at

                                             www.WorcestershireRegiment.com

or you can e-mail them at

                                             rhq@wfr.army.mod.uk

The service I received from the Regimental Archivist when I was researching my grandfather was excellent.

[km1971]

County and city names did not mean a lot until around about the 1870s as most regiments did not have permanent Depots. If you look in the Muster and Pay Lists (WO12) in Kew for April 1812 it will tell you where the regiment and Depot were at the time. Even if that does not tell you anything you should look to see where the Sergeants are, as they will be out recruiting. This is before the railways but it is surprising how far they would travel. You should especially look for linking two places by ship, as there were dozens of packet boats sailing around the coasts.

I see he was in Spain, America and France. In 1848 surviving veterans of the Peninsula War and the war against the US  were encouraged to apply for a MGS (Military General Service) medal with various clasps for battles they had taken part in. Does his papers have anything on this? If not you should post another question asking for a lookup.

Searching through the Muster and Pay Lists may throw some light on why he was not promoted. There were only a limited number of Coporal posts. The Musters will tell you if he got into trouble for drunkenness etc. But researching 21 years of Musters will take a while.

Ken