Major sources
The partners who have the most records or information to help you trace a military ancestor are:
The National Archives
The National Archives holds a lot of material which may help you find out more about your ancestors serving in the military. Soldiers records, medal rolls, officers’ commissions etc. You will find a list of The National Archives research guides
on their website. The research guides include detailed information on how the records are organised and how to access them.
Many First World War service records were destroyed in a fire caused by enemy action in the Second World War, the surviving service records are known as the “burnt documents’.
You can find out more about World War One and records held at The National Archives in the Pathways to the Past exhibition: First World War - sources for history.
On this website we are featuring Focus on Isaac Rosenberg - the exhibition shows both official documents from FamilyRecords.gov.uk partners and private papers such as poems held in the Rosenberg Collection at the Imperial War Museum which are reproduced with kind permission of Isaac Rosenberg’s literary executors.
We also explore the subject of female service personnel in our Focus on Women in Uniform feature. In this exhibition we profile individual women and some of the organisations in which they served. Using diverse documents sourced from the FamilyRecords.gov.uk partners, including pension records, diaries, census entries and service records, we cover a 100-year time period from the Crimean War to World War II.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC)
Debt of Honour Register - a searchable online database giving details of 1.7 million members of the Commonwealth forces who died in the First or Second World Wars. Find out more on the CWGC (Commonwealth War Graves Commission) partner page.
The Imperial War Museum
The IWM (Imperial War Museum) has details about what can be found at the Museum and its five sites, as well as information about the seven reference departments that can help with family history research. There are Online Exhibitions and Recommended Reading Lists, as well as introductory leaflets for those starting family history research. These include: Tracing Army Ancestry, Tracing Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force Ancestry, Tracing Royal Navy Ancestry and Tracing Merchant Navy Ancestry - full details can be found on the IWM Family History page.
The India Office records at the British Library
Information about the records of the East India Company’s Army (1748-1861) and the Indian Army (1861-1947) can be found in the British Library’s India Office section. There is a family history section which includes information on British army officers and soldiers, the Royal Indian Air Force and the Royal Air Force in India and the Indian Naval services. The pages include photographs and digitised records giving examples of the type of material available to researchers.
Some of these records are also described in the A2A (Access to Archives) database - to look for them you can choose to search only the “British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections” catalogues by selecting this name from the drop-down menu under the heading “Location of Archives” on the A2A search page.
General Register Office for Scotland (GROS)
GROS holds:
- Service records (from 1881). These include Army Returns of births, deaths and marriages of Scottish persons at military stations abroad during the period 1881-1959.
- Service Departments Registers which, since 1 April 1959, have recorded births, deaths and marriages outside the United Kingdom relating to persons ordinarily resident in Scotland who are serving in or employed by HM Forces, including the families of members of the Forces.
- Certified copies of entries relating to marriages solemnised by Army chaplains outside the United Kingdom since 1892, where one of the parties to the marriage is described as Scottish and at least one of the parties is serving in HM Forces.
- War registers (from 1899). Registers are held of the:
- South African War (1899-1902), which records the deaths of Scottish soldiers;
- World War I (1914-1918), which records the deaths of Scottish persons serving as Warrant Officers, Non-Commissioned Officers or Men in the Army (but not officers);
- Petty Officers or Men in the Royal Navy;
- World War II (1939-1945), which comprises incomplete returns of the deaths of Scottish members of the Armed Forces.
Find out more about GROS and its holdings on the General Register Office for Scotland partner page or on the General Register Office for Scotland.
