19th century Army 'rank & file' service records
The Family Tree Academy is here to help you grow your genealogy skills. The aim is to help teach more about the search skills and source know-how needed to step up your family history research.
In this issue, Family Tree Academy tutor David Annal looks at 19th century soldiers’ service records and demonstrates how to use them to piece together the careers of your military ancestors through the 1800s.
A guide to The records
The British Army was one of the UK’s biggest employers in the 19th century with more than 200,000 men serving during the Napoleonic Wars. The number fluctuated over the next 100 years or so, reaching 215,000 in the 1850s/60s and rising even higher towards the end of the century. Even in times of peace, the number of men ‘on the strength’ remained consistently above 100,000.
With numbers like this it’s hardly surprising that most of us can find soldiers somewhere in our families, even before the mass conscription of the First World War (a conflict that saw the Army expand to a force of nearly 4 million men).
Th is is a guide to tracing the records of those ancestors who served in the ‘rank and file’ of the British Army during the 19th century; the Privates, Corporals and Sergeants of the Infantry Regiments and the
