Breakthrough!

Yesterday I was at the King's Regiment Family History Day at the Museum of Liverpool, I had a great day, met some relatives of men from my memorial and helped a few people with their enquiries (but wasn't very good at getting contact details so please do get in touch if I gave you my card!)

The breakthrough came about thanks to the amazing work done by Kathy D, she has spent I don't know how many hours indexing wounded and casualty lists and digging up resources from all over the place to collate a huge amount of information in her databases. Without her hard work and the amazing database she is creating, the following connection couldn't have been made...

The only name on my memorial that I had drawn a complete blank with was Thomas Girvin. There just wasn't anyone of that name in the area, Kathy had a look in her database and found Thomas Lindburg who died of wounds, and his mother was listed as Girvin. Could it be my man? Kathy searched about a bit more for me and found that in the 1911 census Thomas Lindburg lived practically over the road from St James Church with his mother Harriet Girvin and her husband. I'm still searching about to figure out the strange dynamics of this family but I am confident that this is the right soldier. The 1911 census claims Harriet was married the year after Thomas was born, so it is conceivable that he was known as Thomas Girvin but his family used his official name on forms and he used it to enlist in the army.

There is a link to Kathy's website "Liverpool Soldiers" on the Links and Resources page.