Clues and Surprises in a Military Record

Part of William McKay's Military Record

Sometimes documents I've had for years throw up some real surprises. When I started looking into the Chubb family and, more specifically, the family of Henrietta Chubb/McKay, I saw that I had printed out the military record of her husband William McKay, which I had found on Find My Past. The record is eight pages long so there's lots of info but when I found it, I just printed it out, stuck it in a plastic sleeve and put it in a binder. Now that I'm searching for clues about the birth of Henrietta and William's children, I decided to extract information from the record. That information should tell me the couple's moves and give me locations to search for birth records.

During the extraction process, I was reminded that the chronicled moves were not necessarily those of both members of the couple. Concerning the marriage, under the heading, "To whom married place and time" the military record states: "Henrietta Chubb at Weymouth on 18th Sept 1869 without leave. Recognized from date of embarkation for India". As you can see from the chart below, that wasn't until 10 years after the marriage when William was sent to Madras. So, if Henrietta wasn't acknowledged as William's wife by the military she would not have been able to join him in his travels until he was in India in 1879.

Finding Henrietta's whereabouts and the births of her children may be more complicated than I thought. It really would have been helpful if Harold Chambers' family tree had included dates. But I can only work with what I have and there are some really good clues in William McKay's military record. Besides the information in the military history sheet as above, more detail of his whereabouts can be seen in his medical records. It seems that he sought medical attention on a regular basis; which is only to be expected for someone who had a disease for most of his life. I was surprised by the notation made on his record when he was at Chatham in 1866 when he was 18 years old. He had been suffering from the affects of syphilis at what, at that time, was thought to be the contagious stage of the disease. There was no cure for syphilis at that time. I found that concerning as he married just three years later. 

There was another unexpected item on William McKay's military record. He was tried for desertion in 1876. Between William's disease and desertion, it looks like I have a few more things to research.

Sources:

Find My Past – British Army Service Records 1760-1915 Records of William McKay enlisted 23^rd July, 1863

Images:

Part of military record - Find My Past – British Army Service Records 1760-1915 Records of William McKay enlisted 23^rd July, 1863