Project Outline:
Origins:
The original intention was to identify, locate and where necessary initiate preservation and, where suitable and possible, digitise archives pertaining to British military involvement in North America (including the Caribbean) from 1650 to 1900.
However, due to the movement of the various regiments and Corps of the British Army, this has since been widened to British Military involvement worldwide.
Database:
The database was originally created to help us track our research in terms of which units served in North America, where and when they served.
It soon became apparent that, with the exception of the Royal Marines, very little Primary source material survived at regimental level. Furthermore, unit letter books and order books were the personal property of the unit CO until the mid 1800’s. Consequently we began to look for personal archives of officers who had served in North America.
To date, we have progressed to approximately 1800 in identifying Regimental locations and identified and recorded in the database:
- 453 regiments which have, between them have been known by 1514 different names in 12,548 locations or actions. We have, where they exist, recorded the locations of both their archives and museums.
- Listed 621 books pertaining to those regiments’ service in the area.
- 11,399 officers who have between them served in 20,468 locations/actions and their dates.
- 519 officers who have between them, 1781 archive records in 230 archives
Future Aims:
We require further funding to achieve the following:
- We still have over 120 Army lists to examine, enter the relevant officers’ details and search for their archives. As far as Officers are concerned, we have barely scratched the surface.
- We would like to bring the regimental and officer data to 1900.
- We would like to make the data available on the Internet for historians to make use of. This will require the creation maintaining and hosting of website.
- The database needs editing.
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British Army Historical Database 