Bridge of Allan Roll of Honour

As we approach the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, attention turns to commemorating the servicemen and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice. New publications appear regularly, containing research into those who fought and died in the service of their country.

 

While this is highly commendable, several members of the Scottish Military Research Group (SMRG) feel this does a disservice to the countless Scots who served just as gallantly and after demobilisation returned home to a thankful family.  

 

We believe that those who returned from the war deserve to be remembered just as much as those who died on a foreign field. Many who survived came home with physical and psychological scars and for some their war did not end with the cessation of hostilities; they carried their wounds with them until the day they died, perhaps decades later.

 

As part of our commitment to remembering all those who served in the First World War we are transcribing and digitally republishing rolls of honour from ninety years ago which list the fallen and the survivors. While the current focus is on First World War rolls the SMRG also intends to republish rolls of honour from other historic conflicts.

 

The Bridge of Allan Roll of Honour 1914-1919 was published shortly after the end of the First World War and is a fascinating record of the service given by the men of one town in Scotland .

 

The roll includes soldiers, sailors and airmen. It mentions those decorated for acts of gallantry and those who died on land, at sea and in the air. There is no rank or class divisions in the list; all men are listed equally from the highly-decorated colonel serving as an Aide-de-Camp to the King, to the humble private who did his own bit in achieving the final victory.

 

This rare out-of-print roll of honour is now available to download from the Scottish Military Research Group by following this link: 

The Bridge of Allan Roll of Honour

Lloyds Bank Memorial Album

For a while now we've offered for sale a CD of the Lloyds Bank Memorial Album. This had been scanned and newly indexed, and enabled you to locate a specific portrait on a page.

We've now decided to cease publication of the CD and offer it as a digital download. This actually means the cost of the publication is lower, as you no longer have to pay for postage and packaging.

The album can be downloaded from Print on Demand service Lulu, by following this link:

Lloyds Bank Memorial Album 1914-1918

We hope to offer further downloads of other items in the near future - watch this space!

Additional names for the Glasgow Roll of Honour?

Another item about our Glasgow Roll...

Since the publication of the Roll of Honour for Glasgow, we've been contacted on several occasions by people noting that their relative is not included.

We weren't too surprised at this, as the Roll was published nearly ninety years ago, and at the time there were bound to be omissions. We took the decision to reprint the Roll "as is", with no additional names added - even if we were 100% sure they warranted inclusion.

However, we didn't want the names of these "missing" Glasgow men to be forgotten, so we have taken the decision to collate any names which it is believed should be on the Roll.

We won't be adding these to the original publication, but will instead list them on our website in an additional supplement to the original Roll of Honour.

The information will be the same as the 1920s publication, and will hopefully include Name, Rank, Unit and Address.

If you have a relative who isn't currently on the Glasgow Roll of Honour, and you would like us to include him, please send the details you have to the new email address for this supplement:

glasgow-roll-of-honour@live.co.uk

Once we have compiled some of the names we will publish it on our website, and then subsequently update it on a regular basis.

Glasgow City Roll of Honour - Update

The Scottish Military Research Group have been running a project to fully transcribe the First World War Roll of Honour for the City of Glasgow. It was originally published in 1922 and listed name, rank, unit and address. At present it can only be viewed at the City Chambers in George Square, or the Mitchell Library in Glasgow. For people outside of Glasgow access to the information is difficult.

Our aim is to make the Roll more accessible, and at the same time make it easier to search and sort the data.

The first section of 4,340 names covered surnames A - D and was released on 23rd December 2011.

Today we are pleased to release the second section, which covers the surnames E - K and is for a further 3,600 names.

The purpose of the project is to take the existing information and make it more manageable, without diluting it with extraneous information. Among the goals of the project are the following:

• Split the name into surname and first name(s), thus making it easier for researchers to search for a specific name.

• Standardise the Unit text, making it easier for searching. For example, "Black Watch" and "Royal Highlanders" will be standardised into one specific unit title, as will "Cameronians" and "Scottish Rifles", This will make it easier for a researcher looking for a specific regiment or unit.

• Splitting the address into separate fields, thus making it easier for a researcher to locate the fallen for a specific street, district or even a particular house.

The Roll contains nearly 18,500 names and only a small number of people are working on the project so it is likely to be 2012 before it is fully completed.

A lot of the work in transcribing the roll was undertaken by the late Kevin O'Neill who was an enthusiastic researcher and transcriber of Great War records. The newly transcribed roll is dedicated to his memory.

The two completed sections of the Roll can be viewed by clicking the links below:

Glasgow City Roll of Honour E-K

Glasgow City Roll of Honour A-D

Sutherlandshire Roll of Honour - Picture a Museum Day

It's picture-a-museum day today. All the big museums are involved but I'd like to highlight two items in two small museums in Sutherland.

The museums in question are the Brora Heritage Centre and Historylinks in Dornoch.

Both have Rolls of Honour for Sutherland from the First World War. They look similar but are actually different.

The one in Brora is called Sutherlandshire (c) and lists the men who served from East Sutherland from the parishes of Kildonan, Loth, Clyne and Golspie. The one in Dornoch is called Dornoch and District but is quite clearly done by the same people who did the one in Brora.

This leads me to suspect that there are other Sutherland Rolls of Honour. Perhaps Sutherlandshire (a) and Sutherlandshire (b) covered the other seven parishes of the county?

The one in Clyne used to hang in the drill hall in Brora and was thrown in a skip during its conversion to a library in the 1990s. Luckily a passing member of the Heritage Society saw it and rescued it.

The paper used is not the usual vellum used for rolls of honour and I think the local newspaper "The Northern Times" may have been involved in producing the rolls in 1919. That may mean several copies of the same rolls were produced to hang in drill halls or other prominent local places across the parishes of Sutherland. Historylinks have three copies of their roll which supports this theory.

The Scottish War Memorials Project now has hundreds of rolls of honour from all over Scotland and it is obvious many communities wanted to display rolls like these to highlight not only those who died but also those who served so I'm sure there would have been a demand across Sutherland for these Rolls of Honour.

Hopefully the other copies have not been lost. Many halls, churches and schools have war memorials and rolls of honour in storage in cupboards, and back rooms. I live in hope that the other rolls in this series will some day turn up in another museum or heritage centre in Sutherland.

It is picture a museum day so here are the photos of the rolls. The Historylinks' Roll is taken from this webpage.

Armadale and District Roll of Honour - websites of interest

In addition to working at the Royal Scots museum, Tom Gordon has spent a lot of his free time compiling a website devoted to the men of Armadale and district in the Great War.

His site includes a wealth of information on the men from the area and is well worth a look if you are researching a man from the district.

Armadale and District Roll of Honour

First World War Blinkers

No, I've not gone mad and splashed out on ninety five year old War Office horse furniture on e-bay. WW1 blinkers is a term I like to apply to well meaning people who research their local war memorials BUT only look into those who died between 1914 and 1918.

Don't get me wrong, I think their heart is in the right place. My problem is that on most war memorials there are also names of those who died between 1939-1945 and where is the research on them?

Can anyone help me with this? Why ignore the brave men and women who died in the Second World War when compiling a roll of honour, is it too recent or is there something more. After all, there is a pressing reason to research the Second World War now while relatives and friends of the deceased are still living.

Is it perhaps easier to research the Great War names? Certainly there are plenty of online resources to research Great War soldiers and sailors; currently far more than for the Second World War.

That leads me onto another little bugbear of mine - published rolls of honour which only use data from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and Soldiers Died in the Great War. That may have been OK ten years ago when there were fewer online resources available but in 2010 that is just a cop out. The number of available sources is actually growing, with new books published on a regular basis, and new sources of first-hand information becoming availble - the recent release of records on both Ancestry and Find My Past has opened new doors to researchers. Projects like our own Daily Record Index are also a useful source of information - so why ignore them?

I'm starting to sound like a grumpy old man now and I really don't want to start denigrating folk who are sincere in their actions. It's just I can help get this feeling whenever I see a story like the one we posted recently about Carnoustie. With a little bit more effort by researchers the people who died beating Hitler, the Nazis and their evil Axis cronies would also get the recognition they so rightly deserve.

(Text by Adam Brown)

2010 Review of the Year

As we approach the end of 2010, we decided to look back on some of the projects the Research Group has worked on, and to look forward to what 2011 may bring.

Our primary project, the Scottish War Memorials Project has continued to add new memorials and additional information throughout the year. As time goes by, the number of “new” memorials to be added has diminished, but there is always information to be added, and new memorials do continue to be found. The number of civic memorials added to the project is something we can feel justifiably proud of, and our focus in the future will be to add memorials from other sources such as churches, places of work and school/colleges.

Memorials continue to make news headlines, and a recent story in the Courier newspaper was cause for cautious celebration, as the memorial to the men of Mains, located in Caird Park in Dundee will hopefully undergo restoration and relocation in 2011. The members of the Research Group can feel some small amount of pride in this, as it was our initial discovery of the condition of the memorial, and our highlighting it to both the media and local interested parties were the opening stages of what has proven to be a long and complicated process. Hopefully the end of the tunnel is in sight for this much neglected memorial.

Our War Graves Project also continued this year, with new grave photographs added on a regular basis. I will admit that I personally have let my involvement in this project slip as I have worked on other things, but 201 will see me attempting to take a more active interest in this project.

Several members of the Research Group spent a lot of time and effort this year working with the University of Edinburgh on a website concentrating on the efforts of people from Edinburgh and the Lothians during the First World War. The Edinburgh’s War website went live in October this year and has been a great success. 2011 should see more work on the website – watch this space!

Looking at our own projects, the Roll of Honour for the city of Glasgow has lain dormant for a little while, but only last week we were able to launch the first batch of surnames from the transcription. 2011 will see us continue to work on this, with a hopefully second batch being released in the spring.

Another new project, the indexing of the Daily Record for the Great War, has been progressing well. I have been working on the issues from 1915 and John Houston has been indexing those from 1917. Between the two of us we now have almost 12 months of indexing completed, and next year will see that work continue. To see a glimpse of how the complete index will look, we recently showcased the index for January 1915. We're always looking for people to assist with the indexing - if you think you can help, please get in touch!

This year also saw this blog making more of an impact – when I started it in late 2008 I saw it as a method of getting news, research items of interest, and articles “out there” where they might be of interest. I’d like to think that now we’ve finally got the correct balance of news items and our own articles –long may this continue into next year and beyond. We’re also hoping that next year will see more “guest authors” writing for the blog – got something to say? Let us know and we’ll post it here!

The final new development was the launch of our Facebook page – I’ve been using Facebook for a while now, and it seemed a sensible move to create a page for the SMRG – early days yet, but fingers crossed it can grow into a useful hub for information.

So…that was 2010. I’ve made mention of a few things in store for next year, but who knows what’s round the corner? I hope you’ll stay with us to see what crops up!

The SMRG Advent Calendar - Day 23

Today's advent calendar is actually a late replacement for something else which had been planned but unfortunately fell through at the last minute.

However, that gives me an opportunity to launch what might be the most exciting item of all, and perhaps our biggest launch of the year.

Among the many projects we have running is one which has been sitting on the "back burner" for a little while. This is the project to fully transcribe the Roll of Honour for the city of Glasgow.

The project page on our website goes into more detail about the Roll. It contains nearly 18,500 names and the task to transcribe has not been an easy one.

The project is still not complete, as there is much checking to be done, but today, as our Christmas present to you all, we proudly present the first section of the transcribed roll - this comprises the letters A through to D, and features just over 4,500 entries.

Much of the work in transcribing this roll was undertaken by Kevin O'Neill. Kevin did a lot of work for the Research Group, transcribing not only this roll but also many of the names on civic war memorials. Kevin sadly passed away in November this year, and he was very keen to see the Roll for Glasgow completed. Sadly he did not live to see that, but we would like to take this opportunity to dedicate the transcribed roll to his memory.

The first section of the Roll can be viewed by clicking the link below:

Glasgow City Roll of Honour A-D

Carnoustie's First World War heroes honoured

Seems today is a busy day for news!

From The Courier:

Angus councillors have hailed a roll of honour to commemorate Carnoustie's war heroes, displayed in the burgh's library.

After a lot of painstaking research, Maureen Fleming — a member of the library staff — has compiled detailed information on all 142 of those who gave their lives.

These albums and the story of Carnoustie's war memorial are the centrepiece of an exhibition at the library.

Councillor Jim Millar, who is convener of cultural services, said, "As an army veteran myself, I welcome the display of the roll of honour commemorating those from Carnoustie who lost their lives in the First World War.

"I am sure that the Great War exhibition will be of interest to everyone who either had a relative who served in the Great War or who is interested in local history, and I encourage people to visit Carnoustie Library while this display is on show."

Carnoustie has never had its own roll of honour of those who fell in the First World War.

As well as contemporary photographs of the town, the full story of Carnoustie's two Victoria Cross recipients — George Samson and Charles Jarvis — is also told.

Carnoustie councillor Peter Murphy said, "I think it gives an identity to the area in regard to what the people in those days experienced — both in the war and on the home front.

"It balances the two, which I think is excellent. There is even — I noticed from the newspaper cuttings — letters from conscientious objectors, so not everybody was exactly for the war.

"There's a special book recording people who lost their lives, which is comprehensive — and particularly of interest, of course, are the two Carnoustie VCs.

Town's Role

"I think the exhibition is of strong community interest and acknowledgement of the role the people of Carnoustie played. We can never overstate the loss and sacrifice those people made.

"The permanent thing in Carnoustie is the wonderful war memorial, which is one of the most attractive in terms of its design in Scotland. I think that is always a reminder to people of Carnoustie's role in the war."

Lance Corporal Jarvis of the Royal Engineers, was a resident of Carnoustie from 1889 until he joined the army in 1899. He was one of five men awarded the medal three weeks after the outbreak of the First World War, for his role in destroying a bridge under heavy fire during the Battle of Mons in 1914.

Petty Officer George Samson of the Royal Naval Reserve was born in Carnoustie in 1889 and was awarded the medal for multiple acts of gallantry during the landings at Gallipoli in 1915, during which he rescued a number of his colleagues and treated their injuries under fire before himself being hit by machine gun fire, sustaining 19 bullet wounds. His medals were sold for £247,000 to Lord Ashcroft at auction in 2007.

There are also exhibits from Angus museums on show and The Black Watch Regimental Museum in Perth has also loaned items for display. DC Thomson has also contributed art prints for a war comics' display.

The free exhibition runs until 22nd January.

Downloads update

We've posted before about our transcription of the Roll of Honour for the Commercial Bank of Scotland. It's ben hosted online in a few places, but unfortunately the last place we had it available has now removed all their scanned books and documents.

So, for the third, and hopefully final time, we have a new location for the Roll. It can now be found at the Internet Archive at this location.

Plus, as a special bonus we now have a new item available for you to download. It's the February 1916 issue of "The Outpost", the magazine of the 17th Batalion of the Highland Light Infantry. You can also download this entirely free of charge, also from the Internet Archive.

Finally, we hope to make more items available in the future via the Internet Archive. You can check what we have available by visiting the following link:

http://www.archive.org/bookmarks/The%20Scottish%20Military%20Research%20Group

Nairnshire Roll of Honour 1914-1921

Received the following information from SMRG friend Ken Nisbet:

"The Nairnshire Roll of Honour has now been published by the SGS at a cost of £12.00 plus postage. It contains details of the men and women from Nairnshire who are known who have served from 1914 - 1921 in the Navy Army and Airforce, including all those listed on the Auldearn Ardclach Cawdor Croy and Nairn war memorials and those who should be on the memorials but are not. As well as those who survived the war. Extracts of the war diaries for the 4th Battalion Cameron Highlanders for Neuve Chapelle, Festubert, Givenchy, Loos have been included."

The Scottish Genealogy Society should have it available on their website soon but in the meantime you can contact them by sending an e-mail to sales@scotsgenealogy.com - alternatively you can contact them at is 15 Victoria Terrace Edinburgh EH1 2JL

Lewis Roll of Honour

On the Scottish War Graves Project site yesterday, user "adb41" posted that he now had a Roll of Honour for the Isle of Lewis online.

It's well worth checking out - click to visit his site.

Oddfellows Roll of Honour

Paul "spoons" Goodwin has just posted an interesting Roll of Honour to the Scottish War Memorials Project.

This Roll of Honour, to the Oddfellows Hall at New Abbey, is currently in private hands and only survived through a stroke of luck when the hall originally closed.

Well worth a look: Oddfellows Roll of Honour, New Abbey.

Commercial Bank of Scotland 14-18 Roll of Honour

One of the aims of the Scottish Military Research Group was to make information more available to those who required. To that end we have been carrying out transcribing and digitising of various records, and we will release these at various times.

Some of these records we will release on CD, mainly due to the size of the data and in order to recoup some of the costs involved, but other items we will release as free downloads.

This is the first in our series of free downloads: the Roll of Honour for the Commercial Bank of Scotland. This lists all members of the bank who served in the First World War, as well as those who died in service.

The Roll of Honour lists 578 makes, 99 of which made the supreme sacrifice. The Roll has been fully transcribed, together with all the explanatory and introductory text. It is fully searchable so it is easy to find a particular name.

Original copies of this Roll are hard to find, so we are pleased to make this new version available. It can be downloaded by using one of the following links:

Download via Rapidshare

Download via Sendspace

Please let us know if you experience any problems with these download links via our email address - scottishmilitaryresearch@live.co.uk