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| Robert Leslie Smith 1885 - ? |
I never met my paternal grandfather although I believe that he was alive when I was born in 1947 and probably did not die until the 1950's in England. When my parents met and married in 1947 my father, Marshall Smith, spoke of his father as deceased. Some years later one of his relatives told my mother that "Dad Smith died" and she was surprised at that, thinking he had been gone for many years. Since my mother herself died in 1971, long before I had interest in my ancestral history, I am not able to question her about this.
After I began doing genealogical research in 1992, and particularly after I began going to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City in 1994, I was able to learn about Robert Leslie's siblings, his parents and several generations of grandparents. About Robert himself, however, I learned little and I do not yet know where or when he died.
I did know that my grandfather had been a soldier, serving in the 4th Regiment of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry. I also had two pictures of him in military uniform, one of which heads this post, and one picture of him in India.
Robert Leslie Smith is on the right.
This is the reverse side of the picture from India. My father was born on 28 June 1915 in St. Just, England, so was not one of the children addressed on this card. The children at that time were Violet, Mary, and Robert Leslie Jr.
Surprisingly, my father had always saved his father's military chest. Despite being very heavy and cumbersome, it followed him from home to home over many years and was in Northfield when my stepmother, Babs Whitaker, died in 2012. John and I brought it up to Maine and as it was dirty and basically useless, we eventually decided to pull it apart and display the written side on a bookshelf.
Until recently we knew little else about Robert Leslie's military career. World War I broke out in August of 1914 and the card from India is dated December 3, 1914. We also have a piece of needlepoint done by RLS when he was convalescing on a hospital ship. The needlepoint is a picture of a ship surrounded by flags of countries in the British Commonwealth and dated 1916. A late cousin, also named Robert Smith, said that our grandfather was wounded on the western front, thrown into a mass grave and survived only because someone on a burial crew saw that he was moving. As you will read in the next installment of this blog, the story of war service is a complete fabrication. Sometime in the 1990's when I was at an NGS Conference, I met a man who was there as an "expert" in British military history. He told me that unless a soldier died in WWI there was no information available. Not seeing any room for further research I let that line of genealogy drop.
In 2004 when I was living in Arlington, Virginia, I was contacted by Robert Walsh, a man who said he was a second cousin of mine. Rob had recently retired and was very involved researching his Smith ancestry. He had found information I put on a web site (some of it erroneous) and tracked me down. Rob's grandfather, Alfred Edward Smith and my grandfather Robert Leslie Smith, were brothers. Robert was born in 1885, the second eldest of eight children and Alfred, born in 1901, was the youngest.
In 2004 John and I went to Zurich, where Rob has lived for many years and we visited again in 2013. It was on this second visit that Rob dropped something of a bombshell, showing me that he had found the complete military file for RLS on Ancestry as well as additional information about his situation after he left Turner's Falls.
To be continued.
