Introduction
This is the final assessment for another Unit of the Diploma of Family History on writing up your family history, using both primary and secondary sources to build a picture of an ancestor’s lived experience. In this unit we were encouraged to turn our Family History research into a narrative and I chose one of the most interesting tales I’ve found so far – Rifleman Henry Rose.
Most of the narrative is based on primary and secondary sources, but there is also an element of family oral history. Elizabeth Mary Rose was my great-grandmother. My mother remembered her and the tales she told of her childhood in India – travelling out on a sailing ship and back on a steam ship, life on the North-West Frontier, seeing Pathan tribesmen in the street and riding on elephants.
The only unsupported element is the death of Ellen. There is no record of Ellen after her baptism in Winchester and I have chosen to make the not-unlikely assumption that she died on the ship to India. I haven’t yet found any records of military transport voyages, which would record such a death.
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