After first seeing the photos of Charles Francis in his WW1 uniform, I had been intrigued about how he had spent his war. The letter regarding his apprenticeship in the box of family papers I have (which I will, when I have the time, scan in so we can all see them!), stating that he had served for two years, between 1914 and 1916, before returning to C&H Crichton as an apprentice engineer, only piqued my interest further. Why did he only serve two years in the forces?

These questions have been answered at least in part, thanks to Ancestry, which has recently uploaded some WW1 pension records, including that of Charles. He actually joined up in 1913, aged 17 years and 6 months, and joined the Terratorial Forc, in the 5th Battalion the King's Regiment. He was at home from August 1914 to February 1915, but then travelled to France. In July 1915 he was attached to the Headquarters of the 6th Infantry Brigade, and in December that year was transferred to the 99th In...

As you may have read in the news recently, the first sections of the 1911 census have recently been published online. I have been awaiting this eagerly, as I was hoping it would enable me to answer a question that has been nagging me ever since I started doing this family history thing; what happened to Thomas and William Lapthorn? They both sailed from Liverpool to Ellis Island, arriving in May 1909, but despite all my efforts, I couldn't find any further trace of them. They travelled on a ship called the Celtic, and alone - neither of them took their families. The 1911 census, and a bit of searching on Ancestry has solved the mystery, at least partly; they both returned to Liverpool. Thomas actually arrived back in Liverpool only a month after arriving in New York, in June 1909. Slightly strangely, he travelled home not from New York but from Montreal, on a ship called The Victorian. In 1911, he was living with his wife and children, plus his younger brother John, and w...