Norman Marriott has a question about medal cards:

I have copies of my ancestors medal cards but I do not understand what the information means. Is there any way of decoding it?

Paul Nixon, our military history expert, replies:

“The Long, Long Trail website has a section devoted to interpreting medal index cards. If this doesn’t answer your specific query, try posting a query on the site’s Great War Forum.

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We have just added 8,368 new Dorset marriage records to findmypast.co.uk which cover the years 1560 to 1839.

We’ve done some digging around and have found some unusual names in our Dorset parish records collection.

We found a marriage between Martha Loaring and Samuel Single on 14 October 1750 in Bettiscombe, making Martha a married Single:

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The Dorset baptisms also offered some amusing names: here you can see a record for ‘Love Dear Bedloe’ who was baptised on 27 August 1745 in Dorchester:

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We also found a ‘Fruit Carter’ in the Dorset baptisms, who was baptised on 17 May 1807 in Chickerell:

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The Dorset burial records contain a slightly more sinister discovery: an ‘unknown’ person buried on 8 April 1815 in Abbotsbury. The notes state that the unknown person was ‘found on shore’:

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Search for your ancestors in our parish records - and maybe you’ll even make some weird and wonderful discoveries of your own.