Help figuring out Regiment
Thomas Mason a British soldier married Mary Loomes a native of India. Here is their marriage record
His will says he was a British subject. I am trying to figure out which regiment he was in so I can find his enlistment papers and try to figure out who his parents are. Can anyone help me figure out which regiment and where to look for his parents?
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FindMyPast has a number of UK military records. The TNA and Ancestry.com websites also have some records.
If your ancestor survived and retired in the UK and especially at the Chelsea Royal Hospital for Veterans, you should be able to find his personal service/enlistment records (the WO97 series). If he received a medal there should be a record of the medal.
If your ancestor didn't survive or didn't return to the UK, the personal service records are more likely than not to have been lost. You can also view in person at TNA in London the muster rolls and pay lists (WO12 series)- these mention individual soldiers, their location, pay and conduct/remarks. But you need to know the regiment to use the WO12 records.
I have an ancestor from Ireland who joined the army shortly after the famine. He went to India, served in the Indian mutiny of 1857 and then went to Australia and New Zealand. I don't have his WO97 records, because he didn't go to Chelsea, but I do have his medal record, WO12 records and some less detailed military records in New Zealand. I was lucky that his medal record mentioned that he'd been transferred to another regiment and that his son joined that same regiment in India and has a WO97 record.
I had a search on FindMyPast and saw a number of Thomas Mason's in the WO97 records. So you will need to browse through these to see if one of them matches what you know about "your" Thomas Mason. Make sure to look at all the images in each bundle, not just the first page.
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Thanks for the suggestions.
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I got a private message today from a member of this forum who has a contribution to make to this discussion, but doesn't belong to the Asia Genealogy Research community, and is therefore unable to post. This member therefore asked me to pass on what they want to say.
The relevant part of the message reads as follow. I hope this is useful for your research:
The Fndmypast link provided for the marriage record image indicates that his regiment was
H [Honourable] C’s [Company’s] Eu[ropean] Regt[ Regiment] which was short for Honorable East India Company’s European Regiment.
The East India Company had three Armies. The transcript for the record indicates the record is from the Presidency of Bengal, so the soldier was in the Bengal Army.
The records for the East India Company Armies are quite separate to those of the British Army, and are mainly located in the British Library.
There are various FIBIS Fibiwiki pages which provide information about records for soldiers in the various East India Company Armies including
East India Company Army https://wiki.fibis.org/w/East_India_Company_Army
and
Bengal Army https://wiki.fibis.org/w/Bengal_Army
Many of the records mentioned in these Fibiwik pages are available on FamilySearch digitised microfilms, viewable at FamilySearch Centres and FS Affiliate Libraries.
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