Catching up

This glorious summer-like weather continues. Yesterday afternoon I walked across the Downs from Falmer towards Plumpton Plain and did without coat or sweater, just a short-sleeved polo shirt. I suppose we should really be making the most of the sun as this is probably the best weather we shall have this year! This is England after all.

Friday's quick fix seems to have been only temporarily successful as my Blogger address seems to have splipped back to .co.uk. Oh well, c'est la vie and all that.

Remember Henry Jervis? If you don't, you could catch up (if you are at all interested - which you probably aren't) here and here. Anyway, I decided to redo my research. All those years ago I had to traipse around between three or four places to find the records I needed. This week I trawled around the internet instead and in just one afternoon and a bit I had not only recreated most of what I had found before, I had found a lot more information.

Both the London Gazette archives and the Army List for various years - the latter digitised by Google from the library copy in the University of California (or was that Southern California?) - proved most informative and I was able to reconstruct Henry's progress through the ranks. Throughout the relevant years he was, according to the Army List, in the 72nd Regiment. I even found (again, from California) a digitised copy of the history of the regiment written in 1848 in which our Henry was mentioned as being with the regiment in South Africa in 1838/39. Also, in the history of South Africa he is recorded as having been the British Commandant of Port Natal from 20th January to 24th December 1839.

BUT...

In the sketch books is a picture dated July 1829 showing Templemore Barracks.

The Kilkenny Independent (a newspaper) dated 28th May 1828 reports, "The 62nd Regiment, which was stationed at Enniskillen, is ordered to Templemore". This was confirmed when I discovered a web site recording the stationing of the 62nd Regiment. It also confirmed that the regiment was deployed to India in 1830 and was stationed at Bangalore - which bears out the picture of his quarters in my previous post! There are plenty of other sketches from India and from the journey to get there.

I also discovered that there are museums for the regiments which the 62nd and 72nd had become and I thought to email them to see if they could throw any light onto this puzzle. Then I found that they charge - one £12 and hour, the other more - for "research". I decided that I could live in ignorance a little longer. But it just goes to show how much information there is out there in the internet if only one knows how to find it.

And to finish, here is a picture of the new barracks at Limerick dated August 1829 with the 62nd Regiment on parade.