Ackrill family
 

Hello, I am researching my family tree and looking for any info on the Ackrill family. My gt aunt Margaret Jackson married Daniel Ackrill in the 1880s. They had children including William, who served with the Accrington Pals and Frederick who also served in WW1. I cant seem to find anything on them much after that and thought I would try here to see if there are any descendents in the area. Other names I am researching are Mackrell, Jackson, in particular Russell William and George Peter, Stubbins. I have got quite a lot of info on the Stubbins if anyone is interested in this family, but would be very grateful to receive more. Many thanks

Re: Ackrill family
 

Fred Ackrill. Pte. 11th E.L. w 01-07-16, lived in Burnley Rd.
I have his B 2505.
Wm. Ackrill. Pte. 12th K.L. lived in Bold St.
R.W. Jackson. Pte. 11th E.L. w 01-07-16. lived on Richmond Hill St.
G.P. Stubbins. 11th E.L. 11th E.L. C. coy lived in Park Lane Ossy.

There are 4 Mackrell's/Macriel/Macreel, in Greater Acc in 1914/18.

Retlaw.

Re: Ackrill family
 

Thankyou very much for the information. Could you please tell me what his B2505 is ?

Re: Ackrill family
 

Short Service Attestation Papers.
Some attestation Papers were B 2512 or B 2065.
They are in the burnt & unburnt records at Kew Public Record Office.
Retlaw.

Re: Ackrill family
 

Many thanks again. Do these papers include anything else extra to what is already on the Accrington Pals website?

Re: Ackrill family
 

Yes complete military details, next of kin, age, height, weight, etc etc.

I have far more information on the Accrington pals than appears on that website, without the multitude of errors.
Over 4126 men at one time or another served in the 11th Battalion East Lancs.
William Turner and myself spent 100 of hours searching the records at Kew and other record offices.
I also have the information on over 14000, men from Greater Accrington in WW1.
There are over 168 names missing from War Memorials in Hyndburn, that the owner of that website does'nt even know about.

If the information was printed out, it would take near 900 A4 pages both sides. I also have pictures of over 2800 of them.


Retlaw.

Re: Ackrill family
 

I think the work you have done is absolutely fantastic. Without people such as yourself, the Pals would have been allowed to be forgotten. I went to school in the 60s and 70s in Accrington and was taught nothing of them, so its good that someone is taking care to preserve their memory and give them the recognition they deserve. Thankyou very much for your research. You mentioned the details you have and photos, is there anywhere we could get copies of them for the soldiers I mentioned earlier. I would like very much to be able to take a look at them.

The only place these pictures exist is in my computer, there will be a display for one week from Nov 11th at Haworth Art Gallery. After that the exhibition will be shredded.
Photography inside the Art Gallery is not allowed.
No way will these pictures be published in case they finish up on a certain website.

W. Turner and I didn't do all this work, for other people to take advantage of. I will destroy the lot first.

All the written information is in an old DOS 6 program and it cannot be read by todays word processors. Try to look at it in any windozzzze program and its gibberish.

Retlaw.

Re: Ackrill family
 

Hello again
I am so disappointed that I will not be able to see the exhibition as I am away for a week from the 10th.

Re: Ackrill family
 

I put them up last monday along the corridor to the Tiffany collection, whether the curator has covered them up until the 11th Nov, I don't know. The Greater Accrington Heroes are along one & 1/2 walls, the Accrington Pals are at the end of the corridor. 2756 head and shoulders in all.


Retlaw.

Re: Ackrill family
 

Retlaw
It seems such a shame that all your research is not available to the general public. You clearly have your reasons for not wanting that website to get hold of your material but anyone in the future who needs the information you have will have to do the extensive research work again.

With regard to the old info, created in DOS6, do you know what format it was created in and on what machine?

Re: Ackrill family
 

Give me a good reason as to why I should spend all this time and money, just to make it available to the general public, I've met many of those general public over the years, and some are too bone idle to do their own research, they think they have a God given right to other peoples work, some without a thank you or acknowledgement. Children at school are now using the internet to do their school work, and just printing out what they find, thinking thats research, its NOT.

As to people having to do the research all over again, I doubt they could, not all my original sources of information are still available, you would be surprised how much has been lost, thrown away or stolen in the past 20 years. The Christ Church 1918 roll of Honour vanished during refurbishment, Ive made them another. Woodnook Baptists bronze memorial was stolen, again during refurbishment. Quite a number of old churches in Accrington no longer exist, some are now mosques, others demolished, such as the Sacred Heart on Blackburn Rd, the panels that were removed, are not the originals, the originals were carved mable and weighed some two tons.

To people doing family reseach, all they need to do is contact Accy Library, or the Haworth Art Gallery, they in turn will contact me.

As to the info in DOS 6 of course I know the format, I'm using it every day. The machine has been rebuilt many times over the years, the original hard drive was 40 meg, I was told I would never fill it, Ha, the hard drive in the rebuild I'm using now has its own separate DOS partition, DOS 6 will only operate in a 2 gig partition.

That computer has never been connected to the internet and never will be, it cannot be infected by virus's or hacked.

Retlaw.

Re: Ackrill family
 

Sorry I asked.

Re DOS6, I misunderstood, I thought you could not access it.
Data can always be migrated to a different format and it would be quite easy to export it as a csv file.

My post was an offer of help - sorry to trouble you.

Re: Ackrill family
 

No need to apologise, I understand what you mean about migrating files, but the two main programs I use are WordStar & Dbase, both use the same key strokes & macros, files can be crossed from one to the other, without loss of format. Bill Gates tried to buy out these progs, way back before he came up with win95, they wouldn't sell, he then made sure that in any future versions of windozzzze, they would'nt work.

I've tried one or two of my files exported as .rtf, but widozzzzze just trashes every thing up, all my dot commands, fonts line height etc is trashed. Dbase is far superior to access or ecel for what I do.

Retlaw.

Re: Ackrill family
 

You've started something now :)
I migrated some DBase files to a Microsoft system many years ago using Foxpro for Dos but I have been looking through my old notes for more information. I don't remember the files we migrated having any text formatting in them at all. The .dbf table layouts were totally different but it was possible to do a straight import. The problem areas were memo fields but they migrated with a little bit of persuasion.

It looks like the programs you use work like word processors and store the data in a DBF memo field.

Is there an option to export as csv?
You would lose the formatting but keep the data.

Re: Ackrill family
 

Ey up, what the eck ave I started, it wur thee. :hidewall:

Never heard of csv.
Foxpro is nowt like Dbase4. Tried Foxpro years ago it was crap for what I wanted.
I did once, on someones advice, (they were critisising me for using such old programs), copied a WordStar text file .rtf into microsoft office, it was a right dogs breakfast.

In WordStar the fontsize is right there on the page, I can change the font as many times as there are letters in a line of text, and not hope to christ its still the same in a little box at the top of the screen.

I can also change the line height in increments of 0.1 inches to make the text fit a page, there are loads of different . commands for different formats, try that in windozzzze.
.lh 8 is standard, I can change to .lh7.9, .lh7.8, or go up so one line one page, etc etc

Also my fingers are now programed to the keyboard layout, its a special keyboard I bought years ago, has 132 keys, special keys for WordStar, and diagonal keys as well.
can't get used to other keyboards, my fingers keep going to keys that aren't there.
One great advantage is there is no bloody mouse in these programs, dont have to stop work and twiddle that little rat round on the table.

Retlaw.

Re: Ackrill family
 

Ee bye gum eck mi owd fettler!

That theer Dbase file I migrated worra sales ledger for a chain of retail shops, the memo fields only contained unformatted notes. It was at that time, a big file at 3meg! The opening screen, of the latest software packages is bigger than that :)

Dbase4 and Foxpro are database manipulation tools using dbf files, they are not word processors. Foxpro is also a program creation platform but I am not sure if Dbase goes that far.
I have been using Foxpro for years and gone through all the different versions from DOS to the Visual Studio Version I use today. For the type of work I do, software design solutions it is excellent but for your use it is entirely inappropriate.
The guys at one of my clients produce an excellent in house magazine using Quark Express. That is a proper publishing program and would do everything you needed and more.
As for rtf, I have had nightmares with that too. In theory, it is cross platform compliant but when you look at the codes and control structure, every version is different and causes no end of problems. I have been creating HTML files from some old RTF formatted Church Newsletters and all goes well until some unknown code throws the whole page into chaos.

Re: Ackrill family
 

Ay up theer Morecambe. I think wev'e hijacked some ones thread, its gone way off course, what wi windozzzze and Dos.
Si thi
Retlaw.

Re: Ackrill family
 

I think you two have hijacked my thread:) (I dont mind really) I only wanted to know if anyone knew my ancestors and said I would love to have a look at the photos of my relations!!!!!! I had no inentions of publishing them or anything like that, I was just curious to see what my gt uncles looked like :) :) Unfortunately I havent been able to get the gallery to see if I can have a quick look, I will try today if its open, but other than that Retlaw, would you mind telling me if you got their photos from the Observer, if so, I will go to the library. thankyou

Re: Ackrill family
 

It would take ages in the library, I filmed all the old newspapers over 3 years ago. I've tried to add two pictures I have of Stubbins & Jackson.

Retlaw.

Re: Ackrill family
 

Hello Retlaw. Thankyou so much for the photos. I appreciate them very much. Keep up the good work of preserving the pals memory. Have you any intentions of publishing any books? they would be of great interest to many people I'm sure. I wonder if I could take this opportunity to ask you another question. My gt gt cousin Daniel Mackrell was killed in 1918. We have been to Tyne Cot and his name is on the memorial there. I'm just a bit confused because it says he died of wounds, yet there was no body to bury. Do you think it is an error in the records? you would think that if they knew he'd died of wounds, they must have been there when he died.
thankyou

Re: Ackrill family
 

I have picture of a Daniel Mackrell he was in the R.E., then the L.F's,
The fact that he died of wounds, and named on a memorial is not unusual,
that happened to 1000's, his mates would write to his next of kin, and say we buried him close by. The ground where he was buried would have been fought over many times, shelled or bombed and any markers his mates put up would be lost.
Retlaw.

Re: Ackrill family
 

Thankyou for the information. Please dont think I'm a pain, but if you ever come across the photo of Daniel I would really like to see it.

Re: Ackrill family
 

Daniel Mackrell.
His cap badge doesn't look like either R.E. or L.F's.


Retlaw.
Attachment 12954

Re: Ackrill family
 

Retlaw you are a star! thankyou so much. He looks so much like my grandad. I have some more questions for you if that's ok.
Is there an unburnt record for Daniel?
Do you have any photos or other details for Fred and William Ackrill.
I have been very interested in the great war and my family tree for some years now and wish I could speak to my grandad (he was too young to serve) again to ask him about these family members. My gt uncle Walter desperately wanted to sign up for the East Lancs and was rejected because he had a chronic illness. My dad tells me that all Uncle Walter's mates went and when they marched from Accrington he accompanied them and then returned on his own. What I wouldnt give to be able to sit down with him now and talk about it. When you are younger you dont appreciate things do you. thankyou.

Re: Ackrill family
 

I don't know wether there is a record for him or not, I've been searching the records since May this year, 2 hours everyday in the library, started with A's and now nearly finished B's. I don't type in the christian name, just surname, and then troll thro the lot, found several blokes in Greater Acc, I would have missed, not all used their proper christian name Fred/Frederick, Bert/Albert/Herbert/Philbert/Robert, etc etc.
Barnes was the worst, more Barnes's in the Army than fleas on a dog.

So you can see its a long job, by the time I get to Yates I will be using a motorised zimmer frame.

I've met a lot of people who wished they'd talked to their granddads & uncles, I did, I used to sit and listen to them when I was a kid, on what was called the Wesley form, at the bottom of Adelaide St.
I will do a search on Monday.
Retlaw.

Re: Ackrill family
 

Do you have any photos or other details for Fred and William Ackrill.

Didn't find any papers for Ackrill when I was searching A's.

This is the newspaper article for Daniel Macrell, spelt Macreel in S.D.G.W.

Retlaw.
Attachment 12958

Re: Ackrill family
 

many thanks again Retlaw - its good to be able to see what they looked liked.