Discovre The answers to last issue’s challenges How did you do?
Find out the answers to last issue’s Family Tree Academy challenges. Our Academy tutor David Annal explains all
Document challenge – Army service records
Last issue we published images from three Army service records and challenged you to answer some questions relating to them.
Document A – service record of Thomas Newcombe
We showed you two pages of the Army service record of Thomas Newcombe, Private 5439, Devonshire Regiment. Below you will find the answers to the questions we asked.
1 What was Thomas’s occupation at the time of his enlistment?
Thomas was a butcher.
II Thomas named his mother, Margaret Newcombe, as his next of kin. Why did he not name his father?
We can find Thomas as a young boy in the 1881 Census, living with his parents Samuel and Margaret Newcombe in Thorverton, Devon. Samuel was aged 44 at the time. By the time of the 1891 Census, Margaret was a widow and a simple search of the General Register Office (GRO) indexes reveals the death of Samuel Newcombe, aged 54, in the December quarter of 1890 in the Tiverton district (which included Thorverton). Samuel was buried at Thorverton on 9 November 1890.