Horace Craigie Manders CIE

Posted on 2008/08/21 07:34:40 (August 2008).

[Tuesday 19th August]
Recently I've found a renewed interested in my family tree once more. This was largely prompted by an email from a new found Canadian relative, and so I've once more dusted off all my old records, and renewed my subscription to ancestry.co.uk. I've been quite impressed with what they've done with their website in the intervening time - they have tools to actually build your family tree on the site, including some fairly clever automated searching which does a lot of the searching for you.

When I went to visit Nigel and Mary on Sunday, they had a picture of Muriel and Horace's wedding. Muriel is my great grandfather's sister, although I haven't quite figured out how to express that as a relation to me (my great grand aunt? or great great aunt?). Anywho, as a result I'd become quite interested in that bit of the family and wanted to find out more. I'd heard that Muriel and Horace had gone to India - probably in the late 1910s or 1920s. I'd also heard that Muriel (and possible Horace?) had died of a fever whilst out there, and never had any children. Whilst I wasn't able to dig up any more information on Muriel herself, I was able to find out quite a bit about Horace. It turns out he survived to a good old age - at least into his 70s.

He was in the army in India, and for his endeavours was awarded the Order of The Indian Empire. So from then on he had the letters CIE after his name - almost a knighthood! At some point it appears he returned to England, and to my delight I was even able to find him in the phonebook in the 1940s (living near Gloucester Road in London) and again in the 1950s (living in Richmond). Hardly any of the people I have found in my family tree ever really spent any time in London, and it's great to think that an ancestor of mine spent a good few years here in the not too distant past, and maybe drank at some of the same pubs etc.

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