Posted by: Blog Administrator
on May 15, 2010
Tagged in:
‘A’ Troop ,
Yeomanry HQ ,
Wiltshire Yeomanry ,
Territorial Army ,
sergeant ,
Robert Pearson ,
regular army ,
regiment ,
records ,
non-commissioned officers ,
muster rolls ,
missing pages ,
missing ,
instruct ,
incomplete series ,
History Centre ,
help desk assistant ,
hard covers ,
file ,
examining ,
drill ,
documents ,
created ,
collection ,
Chippenham Troop ,
cavalry ,
c.1882 ,
bundles ,
book ,
Archivist ,
administration ,
1882/22 ,
1882/17
Hello, my name is Robert Pearson, and I am an archivist and help desk assistant here at the History Centre. As part of an enquiry I had been asked to find a sergeant in the ‘A’ or Chippenham Troop of the Wiltshire Yeomanry (the cavalry equivalent of the Territorial Army) in c.1882.
We have quite a good collection of muster rolls of the regiment for that period, although there is a gap after 1877. On examining the next roll for 1883-1890 (ref no.1882/17), I found that the first two pages covering ‘A’ Troop were missing, possibly when the hard covers of the book were removed; so I was temporarily frustrated in my search.
Yeomanry, 1863
At that time there was a small permanent staff of non-commissioned officers from the regular army attached to the Yeomanry to instruct in drill, run the administration etc. and I wondered if my man had been among them.
The records of these men are in a separate file (ref no.1882/22) and the first documents I saw on opening this file were the missing pages of the muster roll, with the sergeant listed, and dating from 1882; they had been sent to us by the Yeomanry HQ in those separate bundles, and it was a joy to me to be able to reunite the pages and their register, probably for the first time since they were created. Nature abhorring a vacuum has nothing on an archivist with an incomplete series, so to be able to fill a gap, even only to the extent of one year, is very satisfying. It only remains to try and find the rolls for 1870-1881.
