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The WW1 centenary has seen more memorial resources go online, writes Jonathan Scott
Find your forebear’s name on a war memorial
The solemn-looking object, resembling a large bronze coin, gathered dust on the mantelpiece throughout my childhood. I was in my teens when I finally took it down, realised it had the name of a relative embossed on the front, and asked what it was. This, it turned out, was a Memorial Plaque or ‘Dead Man’s Penny’, issued after the First World War to next-of-kin of service personnel who lost their lives. The Great War suddenly seemed closer, graduating from a chapter in a textbook to something more real.
Finding the name of a family member on any kind of memorial can be a powerful moment. And our websites this month can help you search for relations recorded in stone, find casualty lists, and locate smaller memorials in schools and churches, on village greens and at places of work.
I’ve begun with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, whose database of
1.7 million men and women and the 23,000 cemeteries and memorials in its care remains the single most useful website for genealogists.