Shropshire Routes to Roots

3. The Higley family

How do we identify individual soldiers?

Private Fred Higley Larger image, in a new window [26kb] [Shropshire Archive reference: 5310/D/5]

Photograph of Private Fred Higley, 5th Battalion, KSLI. Detail of "Shrewsbury Men with his Majesty's Forces", a supplement to the Shrewsbury Chronicle, Friday December 11th, 1914.

Private Frederick Higley, who was born in Shrewsbury, joined the 5th Battalion, Kings Shropshire Light Infantry as part of the "First Hundred Thousand", the first group of volunteers who answered Kitchener's call. His cousin, Private A.P. Higley (known as Percy) joined the 6th Battalion. The 6th Battalion was known as "the Pals", because many friends joined at the same time. He's probably in this photograph (opens in a new window) taken in the Quarry, Shrewsbury. We know even more from our documents about another cousin, Private Wilfred John Higley, who was born in Oswestry. Wilfred Higley joined the Army Service Corps, the part of the British Expeditionary Force which supplied the men in the front line.

The families and communities were generally proud of their men joining up, their names and pictures were often published in the local newspaper. Look at the images of the Shrewsbury Chronicle above and see if can answer the following questions. Bear in mind that we've found three cousins at war, all with the same surname;

• How can we be certain that we've found the individual serviceman we're looking for?
• What would make it easier to distinguish between servicemen with the same surnames?

The Service Number

Letter from The Army Service Corps to W.J. Higley's father, George. George Higley has requested Wilfred's personal effects and information about his will.

ASC Office Letter Larger image and transcription, in a new window [36kb]

We must be careful when researching individual soldiers, particularly if they had a common surname. The best way to distinguish between individual soldiers is to find out their unique identification number which were issued to them when they joined the services. If they were in the army, this was called their Regimental or Service Number.

The document above contains the service number for Private W. J. Higley, ASC.

• Can you find it?
• What has happened to Private W. J. Higley?

The Service Number allows us to find individual soldiers using a large range of sources. We'll find out about some of these resources later on.

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