Five volumes of War Office, Class 42 (WO 42) have been digitized and are now
free to view on the The National Archives UK website. WO 42 covers
half pay and widow's pensions in the 19th Century for Provincial and
other Loyalist and Canadian officers. It is chock full of genealogical information such as marriage certificates and references to widows. There are several online sections, organized in alphabetical order. (see image on left)
The images are freely available.
LOYAL AMERICAN AND CANADIAN CORPS is a subset within WO 42 - War Office: Officers' Birth Certificates, Wills and Personal Papers
Also see UK, British Army and Navy Birth, Marriage and Death Records, 1730-1960
I would read through these if I could. How do you access the actual list of names?
ReplyDeleteThanks Lorine,
ReplyDeleteThe second party of the index to WO42/75 Is for Loyal American & Canadian regiments and reads like a who's who for the cream of the family compact.
I'll have to try out the image view on a computer as the app does not work on Safari on an iPad. One of My 4th great grandfathers is in there
Regards,
Bruce
T,
ReplyDeleteAs the description states there are 73 "bundles" of papers.
There are five sub-series within the collection:
British Officers and their Families
Kings German Legion and Other German Corps
Loyal American and Canadian Corps
French, Greek, Swiss and Italian Corps
Miscellaneous
There are two indices appended to the files hyper-linked in the description.
The indices and bundle contents can be viewed on-line or downloaded.
Downloading is the best option as you can keep copies of the records.
The first step is to download the two description files (they are PDFs).
Right-Click on the hyper-link to open it in another tab then click on "add to basket" & close the tab and repeat for the other index.
Click on the shopping cart icon in the upper right corner of the page and select "view basket"
You may have to enter an email address for a receipt to be sent to (but there is no cost associated with these items as they are free) Now you should be directed to a web page with two items with a download link for each.
Browse through the indexes, and at the top of each page of names (listed within the sub sections) there will be, in addition to the series "WO 42", be a number referring to the bundle, and a letter (first Initial of the surname) and number referring to location within the bundle.
Go back to the site and download the part of the file including the letter located above appropriate subseries.
Regards,
Bruce Gordon