Oliver Army records

Although the most common and easily accessible genealogical resources such as census returns and Birth, Marriage and Death (BMD) records without doubt help give us a good framework about our family history, we quite often have to dig a little deeper into other, sometimes less obvious, records and resources to gather more detailed facts about the life's and time's of our ancestors.

Newspapers, wills, immigration records, school records and church records to name but a few are often available for access and can often present new, valuable and interesting findings. These records can however be more difficult to locate, they can be quite time consuming to search and be less immediate in terms of results, however, the hard work can quite often be well rewarded.

Military records are one such record type worthy of time and effort and below are military records of two Oliver men from three different points in our Oliver History.

1 - Joseph (Job) Oliver

This document is Job' army enlistment papers, from the document we can see the following:

- Job enlisted in Her Majesty's 39th Regiment of Foot on the 17th April 1868 for 12 years
- He was born in the parish of Woodstock, but was living in St Pancras when he enlisted working as a Groom
- On enlistment his height is 5" 6 and a quarter, he has dark brown hair, hazel eyes, fair complexion and a small scar on his left leg
- We see his own signature
- He served for more than 12 years in the East Indies
- In 1874 he was appointed Bandsman
- In 1880 he re-engaged to serve 21 years
- He moved to the Dorset Regiment
- He was promoted to Lance Corporal and onto Corporal in 1883
- He served for 18 years and his character on discharge is described as 'Good'


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2 - William Oliver

This document is William' record of service papers and from scanning the document we can see the following:

- William enlisted as a Gunner in His Majesty's Royal Garrison Artillery during WW1
- He enlisted on the 11th March 1916 at Citadel in Plymouth
- He is recorded as living at the White Horse Inn in Stonesfield
- On enlistment his height is 5" 6 and a quarter
- We see his own signature
- His next of Kin details that his father is Edward Oliver, Stonesfield
- He received the British War and Victory medals
- He was admitted to the Suffolk Hospital on the 5th February 1918 until the 16th February 1918
- He was discharged on the 11th December 1918 and returned to the White Horse Inn in Stonesfield
- He received an initial pension of 8/3 and the pension correspondence details that William suffered with chronic Bronchitis


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These three documents provide us with a level of information that you simply do not gather from the census and BMD records alone and arguably you won't find anywhere else. They really provide a new view on these men both physically by way of informing us about their height, hair and eye colour, complexion, but also about their life's experiences more generally during their time in army service - altogether fascinating.