Remembrance day 2011 - Carshalton War Memorial - claiming 2 of my ancestors

This photo shows my dad's paternal grandparents - George Barber and Mary Buckenham. When I first started doing my family research back in 2000 I just used to trawl the Internet tracking down Barber's and Buckenham's in Carshalton, not knowing where they would fit in; but almost knowing for certain the ones I found would be part of my family line.
Most of the information  collected I put in boxes and forgot about them, particularly as in later years there became available so many other ways to track down people and cross reference their details.
When there was a lot of press publicity a couple of weeks ago about the plaque theft from the Carshalton War Memorial - for scrap value - sadly, not an isolated incident, I thought I had better try to verify the connection of the soldiers from WW1 - S H Barber and William Buckenham.
Sidney Herbert Barber was one of the children of the couple in the above photograph and my paternal grandfather's brother...( spelt Sydney on the town's memorial site)

I also have the WW1 service bible of another brother, Arthur.
William Buckenham was initially harder to sort out...

He was the nephew of Mary Buckenham in the first photograph. I had census details of him and his family and realised, both by my papers and the family bible again, that his father had died on November 6 1896 aged only 36. For a time William disappeared from the radar - until I discovered that his mother had married again 4 years later and in the 1901 census he is living with his mother Elizabeth and her husband Edmund Francis. In 1911 he has a half sister along with his own full blood siblings

Having spent years scouring documents I have come to the conclusion that baptismal names are often re-arranged in everyday life- and nearly all have family names repeated as middle or third names - then of course they have nicknames!

Many of my ancestors in the 19th century were farm workers and illiterate and even birthdays were nothing to celebrate - it was more important simply to stay alive - which was no mean feat in those days.

May God Bless and Honour all those on the Carshalton Memorial - as indeed, all around the country.