charles stavely canada 1896

[anneelaine]

Been ringing the CS 1997 but never in,   will keep going with it later to night
A

[JaneyCanuck]

Ah, good -- I wouldn't want to give up on that CS as a result of a CS mix-up with the first guy you called!

[anneelaine]

O no not at all.
Thanks A

[anneelaine]

If i cannot get him on the phone today i will send a photo to his address and ask him if it his his
Gt Gt Grandfather.
 A

[anneelaine]

Do ask me why i phoned him i  do not know,
But after speaking to him  it was so strange !!
First i ask did he have any family called CS he say yes his father he was 1 off 14
then did he know anythink about Canada he said that his father was going when he was younger but never went,
them  did he have anything wrong with his foot he said he did
club food but it was not that bad till he got older and then he was in the army.
very strange but CS he got married 1915 born 1894

[anneelaine]

Also my gt nice has just been born with a bit of a club foot strange
A

[anneelaine]

HELLO
Here we go again
Right the guy who we sold are flat too was from Canada that was 6 years ago
Now i am back home we called into see him,
We ask him to take a look at the photo right away he said it was a Canadian uniform !!!!!the guy  said he could take a copy of it back home after Xmas if i wanted as his family new people that maybe could help.anyway .
Have emailed 2 off the guys i was given and also phoned up again the main one we think is his family
I hope they get back to me
One more thing My sister said that our mum had told her that he did not like his first name!!! do you think maybe he had change it ,     
        we know that he  called himself Chas as that's on the back off the photo
(Just thinking out loud  ) 
also she said that he was very arrogant  and did not like the way my gran spoke   (Cheshire  accent )
A.

[JaneyCanuck]

anneelaine, don't be relying on your Canadian acquaintance's opinion about the uniform.

As we have seen, it is hard even for people in the know to distinguish WWI uniforms.
The one in the photo would probably look to him like a Canadian uniform ... because it does.

And because Canadian uniforms are the ones that he would have seen before.

If he were to see a British uniform from WWI, he probably would not be able to tell them apart either.

If your fellow had been in the Canadian military, he would show up in the CEF attestation papers database. (We did not suffer losses of those records the way England did in WWII.)

If he really wasn't going by his real name, I don't know that we stand a chance! And the whole thing just becomes more confusing ...

For names that someone might not have liked, born around the right time, the only one I see is Enos Staveley. There were a few of them, in what seems to be a bit of a long line of Enos-s, and it's a little confusing - all in Lancashire. One was born in 1896 in Chorley reg dist and seems to have married in 1925 and died in 1945 in Haslingden reg dist. In 1911 he was an engraver's labourer, son of an engraver, so not especially posh.

Maybe we'll have to reconsider one of my musical Staveleys from way back ...

WWI medal cards are a good way to tell whether someone was in the military, even if their records did not survive. The Staveleys in the list include several Charles-s, that Enos, and the odd other odd name, like Elijah, and also a lot with just initials.

I dunno, what with the snooty attitude and giving your gran (that's Annie, the mother of his daughter?) a grammar book for Christmas, the "violin maker" story is starting to sound more plausible.
(My grandfather the son of the musician was certainly snooty when he married my grandmother; he made her change her given name because hers was too "common" for him.)

Let's hope that the person you are trying to contact who is descended from the Charles who had been settled on will respond and know about that Charles, or put you in touch with an older family member who would.

[cosmac]

Was the Cheshire Military Museum any help in identifying the uniform?  Since this is the one definite you have in family history I would definitely not drop trying to identify his uniform.  There are other forums that specifically cater to military history that might also be of help.

If he didn't like his first name and went by his 2nd name it doesn't mean that his given name was something uncommon.  He could have been christened a very ordinary name such as William and just didn't like it.  If your Charles was born in Britain his birth might also be registered without any reference to Charles appearing in the registration.

A family story about his personality might add flavour to your family history but means nothing in tracing facts and generalizations about professions and attitudes going hand in hand tends to muddy the waters of fact finding.  This is my opinion not meant to start an argument on this thread.

When you start contacting livng relatives, who may or may not be related, bear in mind that some families hand down their stories and history and others do not.  Even in the same family what one person knows their siblings might not have any knowledge of.  It  all depends on who was interested enough in the older generations stories to listen and remember.

I still think I would pursue the identification of the uniform as your one solid lead.