The National Roll of the Great War, 1914-1918

[DMAC]

Just noticed that Ancestry have uploaded 11 of the 14 Volumes.

Here are the details:

This database contains 11 volumes of The National Roll of the Great War as well as the Birmingham Roll of Honour.

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 I. The volumes are arranged geographically according to where the soldier was from.

The volumes contained in this database cover the following areas:

* Birmingham

* Leeds

* London

* Luton and District

* Manchester

* Portsmouth

* Salford

* Southampton

The three volumes that are not included in this database cover the areas of Bradford, Bedford, Northampton, and more of London.

Entries in The National Roll of the Great War were compiled by subscription. Information for the entries was generally submitted by family members or the soldiers themselves. Information provided was not verified and therefore, may or may not be accurate.

The collection does not cover the whole of the country, and even for the areas it does cover, is not comprehensive.

I don't know if this collection is included in their current promotion of free access in November for military records. It seems an interesting and useful resource for subscribers nevertheless.

[Stephen Nulty]

Great stuff, it's always good to see more online resources coiming available.

I can access the Roll via my standard membership, but it doesn't appear to be part of the "Free Access" area, which still seems to be Service/Pension/MIC records.

[NigelS]

It might be me, but, having had a quick play, the search results seem rather querky even by Ancestry's standards: one without the exact box ticked - something I don't usually do with other records - returns numerous completely superfluous records. How do others find it?

NigelS

[Chris_Baker]

I spy a bit of corner-cutting here.

"Original data: The National Roll of the Great War, 11 volumes [CD]. Birmingham Roll of Honour 1914-18 [CD]. Cinderford, Gloucestershire, England: Archive CD Books, 2001-2003. www.archivecdbooks.com".

So they are not from the original printed work. This might be a database that has flaws as a result of transcription. I would advise anyone seriously interested not to forget to check an original version.

[andy66]

Yes they are a liitle 'querky' however I have still spent the last hour looking through them.

Fingers crossed they release the Bradford volume soon!

[Chris_Baker]

Naval & Military Press sells reprints at quite a reasonable price.

[Jim Clay]

I spy a bit of corner-cutting here.

"Original data: The National Roll of the Great War, 11 volumes [CD]. Birmingham Roll of Honour 1914-18 [CD]. Cinderford, Gloucestershire, England: Archive CD Books, 2001-2003. www.archivecdbooks.com".

So they are not from the original printed work. This might be a database that has flaws as a result of transcription. I would advise anyone seriously interested not to forget to check an original version.

Archive CD Books was an operation which took rare old volumes (sometimes purchased by them, sometimes borrowed from others), scanned them at high resolution, and marketed the product as reasonably priced CDs, usually, I think, in PDF format. As a side benefit, they frequently undertook conservation work and, where they'd bought them, presented the conserved volumes to appropriate repositories. The ACDB scans will be what Ancestry are using - not transcriptions. So, in fact, they are from the original work.

I would think that, unless they can find someone with the 'missing' volumes, and who is willing to let Ancestry have them for scanning, then what is here is it, as this is all that ACDB had access to.

I don't know how the indexing has been done but, from a quick glance, I imagine it will have been by OCR.

Jim

[TheMixMonkey]

Fine addition to Ancestry in my opinion. Have already found two relatives in the London section

[Chris_Baker]

Gosh you are lucky. In researching getting on for 3000 soldiers (in detail) over the years, I think fewer than 1% have had entries in the National Roll.

[John_Hartley]

I think fewer than 1% have had entries in the National Roll.

And I bet that there were errors.

BTW, the Manchester & Salford volumes have been freely available for some while at spinningtheweb.org.uk

[Chris_Baker]

You're right, John. Some of the descriptions bore little resemblance to the recorded reality. But as people were giving the information from memory, and no doubt embellished things here and there, it's not surprising.

[John_Hartley]

Even down to unit, Chris.

As we speak, I am trawling the Salford edition for 6th Manchesters and I am surprised how many I'm finding that, whilst it mentions 6/Manc, their service was clearly never with them.

I begin to wonder if the men might have originally joined the Bn and then served with another unit but preferred to let their neighbours think they had served with a locally prestigious territorial battalion. Or, even, if complete porkies were told.

John

[NeilEvans]

I'm trawling for some of my Shropshire/Salop Men.

Neil

[Jim Clay]

Neil

Don't forget these are the only areas covered:

* Birmingham

* Leeds

* London

* Luton and District

* Manchester

* Portsmouth

* Salford

* Southampton

Jim

[NeilEvans]

Neil

Don't forget these are the only areas covered:

* Birmingham

* Leeds

* London

* Luton and District

* Manchester

* Portsmouth

* Salford

* Southampton

Jim

Hi Jim,

Don't worry i know, a fair few of the men moved to the cities listed.

Neil

[TheMixMonkey]

Gosh you are lucky. In researching getting on for 3000 soldiers (in detail) over the years, I think fewer than 1% have had entries in the National Roll.

Wow I had no idea the odds would be that short! I found them on the second or third page I looked at too Has their address listed, so I definitely have the right chaps. I'm chuffed. I doubt I'll find any more though as hardly any of my family have lived in the areas mentioned.

[nhclark]

This might be a database that has flaws as a result of transcription.

No, this is not a transcription at all, so is not subject to any errors of that type. It is simply a digitized version of a printed text (for example, just as is the London Gazette, The Times Online, and the books on Google Books) although in this case there is a CD-ROM as a stepping stone.

As someone has pointed out, the search engine uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. So the "quality" of the results depends on the quality of the text and the particular attributes of the software used. The search engine also uses, I think, "Soundex" to widen the number of hits.

And, of course, you can always browse the images rather than use the search engine.

Subject to copyright restrictions, I think you'll see a lot more of these "databases" come on to Ancestry, and congratulations to them for making the information available.

Noel

[carolm]

The findmypast site has more of the National Roll on line:

Section I London W, C and N

Section II London W, C and N

Section III London W, C and N

Section IV Southampton

Section V Luton and vicinity (includes other parts of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire)

Section VI Birmingham

Section VII London W, SE and C

Section VIII Leeds

Section IX Bradford

Section X Portsmouth

Section XI Manchester

Section XII Bedford and Northampton

Section XIII London SE

Section XIV Salford

Unfortunately it can only be searched by name. Ancestry does provide the ability to browse. Findmypast also has De Ruvigny's Roll on line now. Same search limitation exist though. But it's all useful.

Carolyn