Victor John Mead 1897-1915

This is the first of several posts about my Grand Uncle, Victor John Mead. I knew he had died in WW1 and was keen to find out more. Whilst searching to see if FLA had served in WW1, I had joined The Great War Forum. The people on there were incredibly helpful and if anyone wants to know about WW1, I would highly recommend the forum and its sister site The Long, Long Trail as good places to start.

My local library had a copy of the index to the National Roll of the Great War. The National Roll of the Great War is a 14 volume series of short biographical sketches of British soldiers who served, including some who died, in World War 1. The volumes are arranged geographically according to where the soldier was from. To buy the books is very expensive but I discovered that there were members on the forum who had access to some of the volumes, or had downloaded pages from Military-Genealogy. I posted a message asking if anyone had a copy of the page with my Grand Uncle on and was delighted to receive a reply the following day offering to send me a copy of the page! Pushing my luck I asked if he had the page before which would feature my paternal Grandfather, Denys Mead. Incredibly, he had only ever downloaded 5 pages from Military-Genealogy, none featuring the people he wanted, but he had both pages that I wanted - amazing! In future posts I'll write about where he died, where he is buried, his medals and his age.

Starting Out

I called in on my parents today. We'd never spoken about family history before and I had no idea what to expect. Much to my surprise my Dad produces a family tree that had been given to him by one of his brothers! On it is my direct family line going back to 1750.

With a whole family tree to look at I then asked my Mum about her parents. Both had died long before I was born and I knew nothing about them. She told me that her father was Frederick Leo Angus. He was born in July 1893 and died in May 1946. She told me that she had no war medals, though he had talked about being in the army, he could build a bike from scratch and that he had worked in the building trade. She thought he had a sister called Mary.

He married Henrietta (known as Hetty) Frances Packham (nee Bird). Her first husband had been killed in WW1. She was born on 6 April 1890 or 1891 and died in January 1947 or 1948. From her first marriage there was one child, Ena. She had died in the last couple of years in her 90s. My Mum told me about her sister Frances and her brother Freddie, who had been killed in WW2.

She told me about some of her Mum's brothers and sisters. John was the youngest, and there were two sisters Alice and May who had both emigrated to Australia. Their father and my Mum's Grandfather was called John Bird.

With so much to take in, I headed home to work out what to do next.