Finding your family in the National Archives

It's not something I'd thought of before, but when given the opportunity to search the collection of the National Archives of Australia for my family's records, I couldn't help but wish for more salacious skeletons.

The archives' reference officers will offer assistance to people perusing the collection on Family and Community Day, September 28. However, I was lucky enough to be offered a preview with reference services manager Michael Wenke.

I'm told the archives are likely to have something on most Australian families. Most amateur historians find their ancestors in service records from World War I and II, the Boer War post-1900, and immigration records dating from about 1900.

But I'm also asked if anyone in my family has caught the attention of ASIO or registered a patent or trademark.

Most people assume I have exotic ancestry based on my appearance, but both sides of the family are the standard, boring blend of English, Irish, Scottish – a fact I've always found disappointing.

All my ancestors were well-established in Australia by 1900, so the search trail begins with service records.

I grew up hearing war stories from my pop James Clarence Millington, who served in World War II, and my nanna Gloria Millington, whose cousin Hector Clyde "Tidgy" Burgess never returned from Malaya. Records for both men from my mum's side are digitised and readily available online for me to peruse.

I also find files on my great-great-grandfather on my dad's side, William Willis, who was a professional soldier serving in the Boer War and World War I, and on my mum's great-uncle George Thomas Holdstock, who served in World War I.

Nanna always spoke fondly of her cousin Tidgy and how the whole of South Grafton grieved over his death. He was said to have helped save his mate before succumbing to bayonet wounds himself.

Seeing his service records put it into perspective.

He was 25 years old when he volunteered on June 12, 1940, in Paddington – just a few years younger than me.

The man staring back at me from the head shot in his archives' file – the first photo I had ever seen of him – wouldn't look out of place walking down Lonsdale Street today.

Standing out among the handwritten scrawl on the service and casualty form that details his every posting, transfer, and wound, is a blue stamp with the word "MISSING" in Malaya on February 16, 1942.

A later handwritten entry backdated to February 11, 1942, is the form's last: "DIED – OF – WOUNDS".

But the next page in his 13-page file is the most heartbreaking. It's a handwritten letter from his mother, Elizabeth Exana Burgess, dated October 17, 1952, thanking the army for sending her late son's medals and asking where her "dear son was buried".

I find it particularly moving that I was named after her. She's the only person I know of besides me with the middle name Exana.

A letter in reply from the Central Army Records Office tells her Tidgy's remains were unable to be identified as the area was under enemy occupation at the time of his death, but assures her the "memory of those gallant men" would be honoured with memorials at the war cemetery overseas.

The next page in the file is a solicitor's letter asking for a copy of Tidgy's death certificate to aid the distribution of her estate. She'd died seven years later never seeing the memorial to her "dear son".

Among the other archive records there are more upbeat stories.

I seem to recall my pop skirting over certain points of his military service when I interviewed him and my nanna for a high school assignment on World War II. Now I think I know why.

There are few revelations in his 11-page file. In the photo taken when he enlisted at Cessnock aged 22, he looks exactly as I remember him when he was in his 80s, albeit younger and with more hair.

But in bright red pen on his service and casualty form are the words "offence: disobeying a lawful command given by his superior officer … fined 5 pounds".

With no mention of court marshalling, Mr Wenke assures me it was likely to have been a minor transgression, swearing at an officer perhaps, which knowing my late pop's roguish ways seems likely.

In the scrawl of handwriting listing the key points of his service, the date he left for Port Moresby stands out: December 24, 1941. I imagine what it must have been like getting called up for full-time duty on Christmas Eve.

The last entry, under many dates mentioning treatment for malaria, is December 17, 1945, when he was "discharged being required for employment in an essential industry". His "proceedings for discharge" form states he was joining the police force, which he stayed with for 30 years.

Although no photos were taken when soldiers enlisted for World War I, my great-grandfather William Willis' records reveal the extent of his tattoos under the "distinctive marks" column on his enrolment form, a crossed swords ship flag on his right arm and crossed guns with the words "faith, hope and charity", and a woman's head on the other.

The file also appears to back my grandmother Patricia Colley's theory that he might have missed out on a certificate of mention for his service.

William wrote to Base Records in 1920, chasing up the certificate he'd been told he was eligible for, but with no reply in his file it remains a mystery.

A professional solder, he enlisted as a sergeant in the early days of war on August 29, 1914.

He served in Cairo and France, and his records are peppered with bouts of ill health and trips to hospital in England for rheumatism and neuritis, but he still managed to receive a certificate for meritorious service on May 1, 1917.

Suffering from "severe phlebitis", he was discharged on May 12, 1918, aged 48.

Correspondence between my Mum's great-uncle George Thomas Holdstock and the army reveal a more amusing anecdote among the otherwise grim tales in his World War I records.

After enlisting in Newcastle on November 27, 1915, aged 28, he served in France before he was declared missing on April 5, 1918, and was reported to be a prisoner of war in German hands.

The records reveal little about his experiences except that it was more than seven months before he was repatriated to a hospital in England with "debility" and diarrhoea on November 30, 1918.He didn't return to Australia until April 23, 1919, and was discharged on June 10, 1919.

The records show he had to go through quite a process, even signing a statutory declaration in March 1939, to ask for a replacement returned soldier's badge after accidentally losing his in "long grass". Luckily he received a duplicate a few weeks later.

Some of the pages among the records appear to have no relevance at all to my family, but do provide a lesson in Commonwealth department record keeping.

The departments were dab hands at recycling, Mr Wenke says, using the backs of discarded forms or records to make handwritten file notes.

I went into this not knowing what I would find, and while it has possibly prompted more questions than it has answered, I was surprised by how easy it was to uncover some little nuggets from my family's history from one source.

The National Archives are giving everyone the chance to ask for help perusing the collection as part of the line-up of activities for Family and Community Day on September 28.

What's in the archives' collection?

How do I get it?