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.
Posted by: Blog Administrator
on Apr 23, 2009
Tagged in:
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Black History ,
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adult baptisms
Hello, I am Terry, Archives and Local Studies Manager. In my last blog I wrote about a document from the English Civil War, a particular interest of mine. Recently, a researcher at the History Centre gave me a reference to an entry in a parish register that relates to another interest of mine, that is British Black History. It was from the Calne Parish Register of burials and dated 10th December 1586 and notes the burial of “Maria Mandula advena et aethiops (stranger and AEthiops).” Is this the earliest reference to a Black person in Wiltshire?
