Every Story Matters
I have taken this title from the message of the opening keynote talk for the 2025 Guild of One Name Studies Conference.
The speaker Jen Baldwin spoke to the conference about British Home Children. Each child had their own story.
My grandmother and her siblings were orphaned in 1907.
The extended family were unable to take the younger children, and the older ones were too young to look after them, she was the youngest.
She ended up in the Mullers Home in Bristol.
Her brother Ernest Roy Compton was to go to the National Children's Home in Edgworth, Lancashire, England. He died from wounds he received whilst fighting in WW1.
Now I knew more about British Home Children.
I believed he had stayed in England and had not been sent to Canada like many orphans. The Home he was in regularly sent children to Canada.
I decided to update his WikiTree profile and make sure his Family Search profile had a link to his WikiTree profile.
I went to add a link to his Find A Grave memorial.
It is maintained by Home Children Canada.
This had led me to want to find out more.
I have found this information about the ship Dominion.
I have now discovered I had information about the ship on which he returned to England aged 17 in 1914.
Did he get to see his siblings before he enlisted?
His sister was still in the Bristol Children's Home when he died in 1917, and, until I started my research, I was not aware of him or his brothers, one who died later that same year, and the other who died in 1918.
I now know that despite him only having a short life he had lived on 2 continents, was wounded fighting for his country and his family, and is known by the family he never knew.
Next year the Guild holds its conference in Hampshire and I am determined to visit the Hampshire Regimental Museum to see if they have anything more that they can add to his story.
