The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 50 No.2 | Sept 2023

Member’s article

London and, already knowing about my grandmother and two other unmarried adults, this left three more siblings to find. Using FreeBMD, I found another unmarried sister who died in Southampton in 1952. This left two males to find and FreeBMD deaths didn’t throw up any suggestions. I decided to do a simple search using Google and the Ancestry search engine. I was looking for Sidney James HATCHER (b 1885 Battersea) and Albert Edward HATCHER (b 1889 Eling). I found them both, which backed up the hand written evidence I had. War heroes I had never been aware of any ‘close’ WW1 heroes in my family - but now I have two. Brothers Sidney and Albert both died overseas in WW1 (which explains why FreeBMD didn’t list their deaths). In Ancestry, there are War Graves, medals and pension records in the Military section for each of them. Google also pointed me to a Southampton Cenotaph website where I discovered that the names of regularly to Southampton and get off the no 47 bus opposite the Cenotaph (known to me as ‘The Junction’). It housed a bird aviary I liked. Never do I recall being told about these two war heroes. In 2012, several green glass panels were both men are commemorated on the Cenotaph itself. As a child, I would go

added around the base of the Cenotaph. This was to add WW2 and other war casualties; to extend the Borough coverage; include previously missing names and

The Southampton Cenotaph

to make it easier to actually find names. The Hatcher names are visible half way up the monument itself - quite high and hard to read with the effects of weathering too. The glass panels are therefore an excellent accompaniment. The free online Cenotaph database at https://southamptoncenotaph.com is no longer available. When it was there, I was surprised to find it provided a lot of information about those commemorated and their siblings. I did notice several errors for the Hatcher family - that I duly reported - and pressed on. It gave some details of the deaths of Sidney and Albert and the names of their wives.

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