Two more Morton soldiers identified and written up.
John and Joseph taylor have taken some investigation in order to prove who they were.
The issues have been that Joseph Taylor, the eldest son of Joseph Parker Taylor was possibly registered 2 years after he was born thus only registered at the time of the marriage of his parents.
Joseph’s mother had died before the 1911 census and on the census return all of the siblings of Joseph Jnr have incorrect ages listed. In order to prove the age of Joseph it was necessary to find him on the 1911 census. When this was found his age was listed correctly as 18.
John Taylor was likewise an issue to prove. Again the age was mis represented on census returns by his father. This meant that there were two possible John Taylor’s that were born at similar times both registered in the Bourne district.
The only way to prove that the John Taylor that was listed on the Morton memorial was John Taylor brother of Joseph was to find what happened to the other John Taylor.
The second John Taylor was found to have been born at Rippingale and eventually found his way to Edenham via Morton. In reality this John was John Thomas Taylor but this alone was not enough proof of the true identity.
Searching the Ancestry.co.uk databases we could not find out what happened to John Thomas Taylor. There appeared to be no marriage or death records for this John Taylor and so it was not possible to separate him from the other John Taylor.
Eventually we managed to find what happened to John Thomas Taylor and found him on the CWGC database as killed in WW1. Luckily the database entry lists his family as living in Scottlethorpe (Edenham). This ties him to the Rippingale family and therefore eliminates him as being the John Taylor on the Morton War Memorial.
That leaves us with John Taylor the brother of Joseph Taylor as, we believe, the correct John Taylor on the Morton war Memorial.
The unfortunate side to this investigation is that we now believe that Joseph Parker Taylor, after loosing his wife and having to bring up his family alone, was then faced with losing two sons in the war.
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