A Canadian Family

You’re In The Army Now! Marmaduke Lawrence Harvey In The Canadian Expeditionary Force

Dear Gabrielle,

As I promised you the other day I’m continuing to post material that relates to your great-grandfather’s brother Marmaduke Lawrence Harvey. I know he’s of particular interest to you because you and your Grandpa Harvey share the same middle name as Marmaduke. What a great Harvey family tradition!

Yesterday I published your wonderful photograph from the Harvey Family Archives which shows Marmaduke in his military Uniform. Today I’m showing you something I found last summer - your great-uncle’s enlistment papers which I obtained from the Soldiers of the First World War Database . Military enlistment papers are a terrific resource for family historians because they contain all sorts of information like the person’s home address and religion, but also information that you don’t usually find anywhere else such as height and hair colour – which are pretty hard to tell from black and white photographs!

One last note - you may be asking yourself why I’ve bothered to transcribe some of the information when we can read it so clearly on the enlistment form. The reason is that search engines cannot read images. So if we want  fellow researchers to find us, we need to have text that the “search bots” can read.

Bye for now,

Auntie Evelyn

Information from Marmaduke Lawrence Harvey’s Enlistment Papers

Marmaduke lived at 176 Congregation St. In Montreal, Quebec.  He belonged to the Methodist Church (probably the  Methodist Centenary where he had been baptised in 1897) and he listed his father Albert Joseph Harvey as his next-of-kin. He was 5 ft 6 in tall and had a fair complexion, blue eyes and light brown hair and you’ll notice he passed his medical with flying colours (“Fit Category “A”). His occupation was “clerk” and he was said to be 21 years old.

Marmaduke’s enlistment papers for the First Quebec Regiment  are dated May 1^st, 1918 – which is towards the end of World War I – but he did in fact go to the European theatre. We know this from family information and a document which I will share with you another day.

Message from Richard Laughton

Evelyn:

Just to let you know that your approach worked and your blog appeared in the daily GOOGLE ALERTS for anyone who has signed on for notices about “Canadian Expeditionary Force”.

I am one of thousands of international members of the CANADIAN EXPEDITIONARY STUDY GROUP who research soldiers and battles of the CEF in the Great War:

http://www.cefresearch.com (Forum Site)
http://www.cefresearch.com/matrix (CEF Details – my project)

You can order a complete copy of Marmaduke’s service record from Library and Archives Canada. That will tell you exactly where he was assigned and served after March 1918. If, as you say, he served in the European Theatre then you can find more details in the on-line War Diaries.

Here are some examples of what can be determined:

http://cefww1soldiername.blogspot.com/

Great site you have created!!

Richard

January 2, 2010 - Posted by Evelyn Yvonne Theriault | . | Genealogy, Harvey, Quebec Genealogy, WWI