I recently found out that my great great grandfather was killed at the Battle of Cedar Mountain during the Civil War. 1st New Jersey Cavalry. Good thing for me he managed to have a couple of kids first.
In your family tree who is the earliest one you know that was killed in battle? Direct ancestors if possible.
I also found out a 1st cousin 3x removed was killed at Shiloh. This was all news to me. My father was on the tail end of WWII and all of my uncles served. All were lucky and survived. The family hasn’t been as lucky this century.
Direct ancestors none that I am aware of. Back as far as I know there wasn’t a big tradition of military service. There’s an indirect ancestor that was killed in WWI. I can’t recall off hand the exact relationship. Big Catholic families make it hard to keep track of everyone and exactly how they are related. as a kid, explanations of how I was related to someone at a family gathering was what I considered normal.
With a lot of generations missing in the family tree to prove it, there’s a pretty strong chance an ancestor died at the Battle of Boyne during the Williamite War. Clan O’Dinorider fought there on the side of James II. The O’Dinorider was killed during the fighting. Likely he wasn’t the only one. The clan lands were pretty remote. They were away from the major cities or trading ports in Ireland. That far back my family tree in all likelihood looks like a wreath. Odds are I’m at least indirectly related to all the O’Dinoriders who fought and died on that battlefield. There’s a real a chance of multiple direct ancestors dying on that battlefield.
I’ve a GGGG Grandfather killed at The Wilderness (44th NC Inf).
Also a GG Grandfather that we think was killed at Shiloh. The story is that he went off to fight the war, never came home, and nobody knows what happened. All the records we can find of others with the same name, and associated variations, were killed outright or survived. But one guy with the right name was severely wounded in the head, and reported to be in the hospital. The next mention in the records is that he was AWOL. Needless to say, we can’t prove it one way or the other, but it’s the most likely we’ve found.
All other ancestors survived their military service.
As those actually fighting in the military, particularly more recently, tend to be young males in their teens or early twenties, most probably hadn’t had children yet.
Why do you say particularly recently? If anything with professional full time armies I would think the average age would be higher. I was in my 40s in Iraq.
A great-uncle of mine was killed at the day of the armistice in World War I, 10/11/1918, while clearing the last mines in Belgium in duty of the Kaiser’s troops. Real bad luck. My grandfather, his elder brother, who also fought in that war (and in the next, even worse war), named a son after him. It’s a tiny little twist of history that the military grave of my great-uncle is now located in a small community in Belgium which has been an official sister city to my and my ancestors community for over 40 years. I’ve visited the region, and to think now that a German has to wage war in Belgium and/or France is totally out of scope of my (and I hope anybody’s) imagination.
The only direct ancestor I know to have fought in battle was my great^5 grandfather, the first of my European ancestors to come to the New World, who came over in 1775 and fought in the Revolution. Family legend has it that he came over specifically for he purpose of fighting the English. But since he got to the fighting so soon after getting off the boat, I assume that he had his kids afterwards, and so must have survived.
I do have one ancestor, a great^2 grandfather, who was a casualty of World War I, but it wasn’t in battle or due to enemy action. He was on the home front, inspecting the railroads for sabotage. A train came through a tunnel that he was checking, and he wasn’t able to get out of the way.
Both of my grandfathers were in the steel industry, and so avoided action in WWII.
If your nation achieved independence without a revolution, without Indian Wars, and without a full-blown civil war, the chances of an ancestor in the military goes down dramatically.
The big ones are WWI and WWII which Canada was in deep. Many Americans won’t have family any where near the Western Hemisphere until the 20th century. Of my relatively large family only one thin branch of the family tree was even in the country pre-Civil War. I doubt I’ll be able to go far enough back in Italy or Prussia to find out if family was involved in other country’s wars.
Pacification of Hungary and Transylvania – early 1849 if the records are correct. In direct bloodline that is the earliest I could prove but there are good claims to some back into the 1750s but it would depend on how you define combat. Does a native doing you in for invading their land count for example.
Both grandads were married with children for WWI, and Dad was too young for WWII. No indication anyone went to the Boer War. The previous major conflict was a century and a half before that, La Conquête (1759-60).
Just not that many opportunities to wear the uniform in combat in our history.
There were the two rebellions in 1837, the Red River Rebellion (1870) and the North-West Rebellion (1885), but none of those involved large numbers of troops. Nothing like US military activities. No indication any ancestors were involved.
The only direct ancestor who was killed(that I know of) was my Mother’s paternal great-grandfather who was killed at the Battle of Cross Keys while serving the CSA in the 1st Maryland Infantry. Fortunately for yours truly, he had two surviving sons.
Mostly, my family has been lucky. My mother’s maternal grandfather served in the US Army in the Indian Wars (no injuries of which I am aware)
Both of my grandfathers had enough children so they were not subject to the draft during WWI.
Six uncles(maternal and paternal) served in WWII with no deaths or serious injuries, though one survived the sinking of his ship in the the Battle of the Coral Sea, and one was captured while fighting in New Guinea and spent about two years in a Japanese POW camp.
My father spent the Korean War in Japan.
I turned eighteen two years after the draft was ended in 1973, had five or six cousins serve between about '62 and '75, but none were sent to Vietnam.
