May 16th, 2009
Thomas Cowan & half a life of soldiering
I’m poring over Thomas Cowan’s four-page service record that arrived a couple of days ago.
He joined up in 1860 to take the Queen’s shilling for 12 years – although what he actually got was “Two pounds and a free kit“. He was a 23 year old coal miner at the time – all six of the Cowan boys were down the pits, a brutal and badly-paid occupation. I imagine the recruiting sergeants coming to the pit heads looking for likely recruits who’d swell the ranks of the lately depleted Army in India were met with open arms. Peter Bailey of Fibis tells me that
After the Indian Mutiny of 1857-1858/9, the European soldiers of the East India Company’s arnies were offered a choice to leave, with a bounty, or transfer to the British Army. About half transferred – but this left the remaining regiments a bit short of soldiers. Accordingly, fresh recruits were needed.
The second page is the meat of the record and would have accompanied Thomas throughout (more…)
Oct 5th, 2008
The Indian connection
I’ve done a lot of work through the years on my family’s history. Unable to contain myself, I’ve gone spinning off into distant cousins of great-great-grandfathers and the like, fascinated by the spreading web of family. Recently, I’ve begun to look at it again, and to focus on the couple who were my paternal great-grandparents.
He was a coalminer turned soldier, she the daughter of a soldier. The twist is that he served in the British Army in India, where he married her when she was aged only fourteen. And I think that her ancestry wasn’t totally British. Curiously, there appear to be no children from this marriage until five years later. That was very unusual in those days. I wonder if he was posted away from home immediately after the marriage, or there were children, but these died from some tropical disease (cholera was very much a fact of life then).
He was posted back to England and their first child was born on the way in Cape Town. There were to be at least twelve (more…)
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