grandad

[jaka]

hello all...........i have been to several channels and have had no luck in finding the resting place of my mums dad, he left when she was young, he was born in a village in 1899, in a village called overton, his father was the last blacksmith in mildenhall, both  in wiltshire, his name was arthur caswell, i have hundreds of caswells  in my family tree, i will have to hope some one that may know something will read this i am also going to put an add in the malborough paper.  jayne x

[Aulus]

Do you know when he died?

From that it might be possible to find him on the GRO indexes, so you'll be able to get his death certificate, which will give his place of death.

Then you could look at the bmd columns of the local newspaper.  Other options would be burial registers of local churches or the registers held by the council cemetery people, depending whether he buried in a churchyard or a council cemetery.

[jaka]

sadly no..........we hav searched the wiltshire records for his death............nothing, he must have moved away           thank you anyway x

[Aulus]

When was he last known to be alive?  He was presumably alive 9 months or so before your mother was born.  Is he shown as living or dead on your parents' marriage certificate.

You might have to trawl through GRO indexes for the period between when you know he was alive and, say, 2000.

Ancestry haven't transcribed the death indexes between 1915 and 1984 yet, so it would be the hard way!


Did he die in WW1 or WW2 maybe?  You can check the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website for free. 

In the post 1984 indexes there are two possibles:

Henry Arthur E Caswell, born 4/7/1899, died Jan 1986, Chippenham, Wilts.
Arthur John Caswell, born 6/10/1901, died Feb 1987, Bournemouth

[patrish]

Henry Arthur E Caswell, born 4/7/1899, died Jan 1986, Chippenham, Wilts.

I just found that one also thought it was a good possibility.

His death certificate will not tell you where he is actually buried though.

[patrish]

If you think he may have moved away what about this entry

Arthur John Caswell b 6.10.1901... Feb 1987 aged 85 in Bournemouth, Hampshire 23 - 384

Its the neighbouring county of Wiltshire.

[jaka]

my mum says she vaguely remembers a letter to say he had  died someone in the seventies, but she has lost the letter and her memory is not good these days. a lost cause i think!

[Aulus]

Not a lost cause - at least not to find his death.  You'll then have to do some legwork to find where he's buried, but we need to find the death first.

So when was the last time he was known to be alive?  Was he at your parent's wedding, for example? If he had died before your mother married, when was her youngest sibling born?
Do you remember him at all? If you do, he must have died after you were born, and you might be able to pin down when you met him, e.g. by remembering what school you were at at the time.

E.g. if you know he was alive in 1974, then that's only 10 quarters of death indexes to go through, and it doesn't seem to be a terribly common name.

Does your mother have any aunts and uncles who may remember better when they last saw him?  Do you have any aunts or uncles who might remember more?

I presume this is his birth: Q3, 1899, Marlborough, 5a, 91

[Geoff-E]

FreeBMD has only 4 Arthur CASWELLS born 1898-1900 ...

  ... one in West Midlands, one in Cheshire, one in Lancs and the one in Wilts.  It's difficult to argue against the 1986 death in Wilts if, as you say, he came from Wilts.