05 November 2021
|
To encourage more people to delve into their family’s history and possibly uncover a wartime legacy, Ancestry® is working with broadcaster Moira Stuart, who was able to discover her own family’s story from the Second World War.
To mark the project, Ancestry® is providing free access to more than two billion UK historic wartime records on its website, from 6 to 12 November 2021.
Moira Stuart's family history story
Moira Stuart's mother, Marjorie Gordon along with her three sisters, Barbara, Joyce and Evelyn were sent to England from Bermuda via New York in 1935, to complete their education. This led to them joining the nursing profession and later the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), to support the war efforts.
Marjorie is recorded in the 1939 England and Wales Register working as a nurse probationer at St Helier Hospital and Queen Mary's Hospital for Children in Carshalton. The Queen Mary was one of the most heavily bombed hospitals in London during the Second World War and Marjorie was amongst 10,000 black Britons living and working in London during the conflict.
Moira comments: I’m heartened by the opportunity to work with Ancestry during this Remembrance, and I hope many others use the opportunity to spend time together to reflect on and uncover their own wartime family histories. I'm also delighted to have the chance to honour my mother and her sisters, and to share memories of their extraordinary wartime contribution in Britain even though they arrived in the early 1930s as schoolgirls.'
Free access to military records
This comes as new research reveals that people know on average four wartime stories about their ancestors. The study of 2,000 British adults also found that 70% of UK adults want to discover more wartime stories in their family’s history, with 45% believing doing so will help create a lasting legacy.
“Many of us hope to have our lives remembered, and leave a legacy for our loved ones, yet so many stories were never told in the aftermath of war - perhaps because people wanted to forget the horrors of war, or were no longer alive to tell them,’’ said Simon Pearce, Family History expert at Ancestry®. “Remembrance Day is the ideal time to discover and reflect on the stories of our ancestors which is why we’ve made our UK wartime records free for everyone to access this week.’’
To learn more about your military family history and access wartime records for free on Ancestry, visit the Ancestry website.