military Archives - Geneageek

Annie, are you okay?

Thanks to the free Fold3 access for this weekend, I’ve been able to pad out a bit of the extended EBBANS tree.

A blanket search for ‘Ebbans’ threw up the name of Annie Ebbans. It turns out she was listed as wife on the WWI military file of Edward Williams, which also gave their marriage date and place as well as their present address (33 Portland St, Walsall). The file also listed names of nine children. A goldmine, right? But was this Annie Ebbans actually linked to my focus Ebbanses?

Ebbans is a fairly uncommon name but is also very often recorded under a wide variety of spellings or just plain mistranscribed so can be difficult to research. It has appeared as Ebbens, Ebbins, Ebans, Evans, Ettans, Hebbans, Ebbon and Ebben; to name just a few.

There was an Ann Ebbans, born circa 1874 on my tree who was a sibling of a more direct ancestor. Until now I had been unable to find any info on this Ann Ebbans after she stopped appearing on her parents’ census records. Now this military record led me to her marriage record where she had been recorded as Ann Evans. Luckily ‘findmypast’ hold the Staffordshire parish registers which showed her father’s name, William and residence, 20 Augustus St. These details both match information I hold so I can safely say this is indeed the sister Annie in my Ebbans tree and am able to trace her life further. Viva la free record weekends!

1894 marriage entry of Edward Williams and Annie Evans (EBBANS)

More Chiropody at Trentham

My mother found more of my great grandfather’s cartoons depicting Trentham military training camp (New Zealand) in World War I (see the original post here):

That First Trentham Feeling

on Trentham Pebbles in Bill Massey’s boots

(Buck – Copyright)

Recruits Coming into Camp

S.M. Try one on his head Sergeant

[sign] Massey’s Massage Institute – hours any old time – cupping done gratis

[sign] Notice – Don’t hurry – Wait your turn

Innokulatin dun ere – Don’t sass the dokter – By order

(copyright Buchan)

Bill Massey was New Zealand’s prime minister at the time.

I received a reply from Archives New Zealand. Unfortunately, they seemed to ignore my request to accredit the images to Charles BUCHAN and instead focussed on which records I could access for a fee.

Chiropody at Trentham

I’ve finally managed to scan some of my grandmother’s photos that I brought back from my holidays.

This one appears to be a photograph of a sketch:

On the back, my grandmother has written “Done by Charles Buchan during WWI. He was in medical unit doing chiropody“.

Charles BUCHAN was my grandmother’s father. She had written a letter to me years ago, when I first became interested in family history, in which she told me:

“Dad had a slight heart problem (valve) so had not been accepted for active service & ended up in medical corp & it was there that he did his training (or experience) in CHIROPODY (lots of feet there to practice on) & on returning to NZ, decided to set himself up as CHIROPODIST much to Grandma Reid’s disapproval. ‘Why on earth would he decide to out on his own, when CLUFFS (or whoever) would have been more than happy to re-employ him?'”

Grandma REID was Charles’ mother-in-law, who seemed to be a rather stern sort (maiden name – Janet HUNTER – grandaughter of James BROWN). I’ve tried to research ‘Cluffs’ and its variations but came up blank (any help from New Zealand would be welcome).

While trying to find out more about Trentham Military Camp, imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon this page from Archives New Zealand :

There was no mention of Charles by name or any further information on his drawing but a look around provided me with another World War One sketch by my ancestor:

Swabbing While You Wait – another drawing by Charles Buchan, 1916

I had never seen this picture before and got very excited. I will be contacting the archives to see if I can obtain a copy of the second image or at the very least if they will credit the images to Charles.