Castleford Patriots - For King and Country

Introduction
Over the next few posts I plan to write about my mother's father's paternal ancestry - the HUGHES family of Yorkshire, Staffordshire and Wales. I thought I would start this area by showing this news cutting from a local Castleford newspaper in 1915. This is an excellent piece of wartime propaganda cum celebration journalism about the local lads going off to war.

My 2xgreat grandfather was called David Hughes and he was born in 1882 in Whitwood, West Yorkshire. He was the eldest of 9 children, with one of his middle siblings being Charles Hughes who was born in 1888 also in Castleford. In 1910, Charles Hughes married Rachel Ann Goodall in the Pontefract district of Yorkshire - of which Castleford was a part (GRO: Jun 1910, Pontefract, 9c, 152). Rachel Ann Goodall was from a very large family.







In the 1901 census (pictured) she is aged 10 and is living with 7 brothers, 3 sisters and her parents George Goodall and Sarah C. Goodall. The family lived at 13 Mill Lane, Allerton Bywater, where George was a grocer shopkeeper. Fourteen years after this census was taken, England was a very different place as many family members had to go to war:


1915
"FOR KING AND COUNTRY"
Another patriotic Castleford family is that of Mrs Sarah C Goodall of 19 Beaucroft Road Castleford who has three sons and two sons-in-law in the Army. Lance-Corporal John Richard Goodall, of the Yorks and Lancashire Regt. is now at the front. Private Wilfred L. Goodall 12th Batt. K.O.Y.L.I. is still in England. Private Percy Goodall, K.O.Y.L.I., is also in training in England. Pte. J. B. Waring (son-in-law) of the R.A.M.C., has been in France for over 12 months; Sert. Charles Hughes another son-in-law is with the K.O.Y.L.I. still in England."

Click on the image for a higher resolution:


I know very little about Charles' time in the war, but I aim to follow up this research to find out more. I have been able to get his army draft registration card from the National Archives pictured here. He was a Sergeant in the K.O.Y.L.I. (King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantrymen). Please see this webpage for more information about this regiment. It appears as if the 12th battallion which Wilfred Goodall joined was formed in Leeds on the 5th September 1914 by the Yorkshire Coalowners Association. This battallion was known as the Miners Batt. It may also have been the one to which Charles belonged. Finally, I do not know anything about what happened to the Goodall brothers or their brother-in-law JB Waring. I really would like to find this out. (See here for update). I do know, however, that Charles died on the 11th May 1935. We believe that it was as a result of the accumulating effect of residual injuries that he sustained during the war.