Ask the Expert - Belgian soldier or refugee?

Our expert Stephen Rigden answers your questions:

‘A quarter of my family history is a virtual mystery to me. My late mother - Annie Grandjean Kilburn - was born in Batley Carr, Dewsbury, West Yorkshire on 24 April 1919. Family legend has it that her father (my grandfather) was a Belgian soldier, hence the middle name of Grandjean. His first name was never revealed to me, assuming it was known by the family.

He was said to be Catholic while my grandmother - Emily Kilburn - was Protestant. The Church was supposed to have arranged for him to be shipped back to Belgium before the birth, although it was said he wished to marry Emily. I have no idea whether any of that was true.

I have discovered through the Huddersfield & District Family History Society that Belgian refugees were living in Batley during World War II but no names were recorded in Council records. At Kew National Archives I found two Belgian refugee families with surname Grandjean residing in Leeds, which is close by. It has also been suggested that he could have been a Belgian soldier visiting his refugee family. I can also imagine that a Belgian soldier is a far more romantic notion than a Belgian refugee.

I would obviously like to know my grandfather’s first name, and where/when he was born, but I realise that finding that information is unlikely. However, would Belgians have actually served within or been affiliated to the British Army in Yorkshire? Do records of ships departing England for Belgium in 1918/1919 exist? Would contact with the Belgian embassy help? Finally, are there any further avenues you could suggest I explore?

Many thanks for any help you could provide.’ From Pat

Steve says:

‘It seems quite possible that the family legend is true and that your maternal grandfather was a Belgian national named Grandjean. The surname is common in Belgium, especially in French-speaking Roman Catholic Wallonia region. Moreover, there were up to 240,000 Belgian refugees in England during the Great War (a number which had dwindled to just under 10,000 by 1921 as a result of post-War repatriation).

As you say, there are various records created by the Home Office, among other governments bodies, now housed at The National Archives in Kew. However, most of these series are general policy and administrative documents and do not relate to individuals. Therefore, you are probably better advised to try locally. I suspect that Belgians would have had to register with the local police as aliens, even though they were not enemy aliens.

In this respect, I suggest you begin by approaching the Wakefield headquarters of the West Yorkshire Archive Services; if Wakefield itself does not hold any records, they should be able to advise whether there are surviving records at any of the other branches, such as the Kirklees one in Huddersfield. You should be prepared for no records to survive. If records for a family named Grandjean do survive, of course, and assuming they give a place of origin within Belgium (which may prove vital to the success of the undertaking), potentially you would then have to try to conduct research in Belgium to see if you could locate and contact descendants.

You would then have to broach the potentially sensitive subject of the paternity of your late mother. Even were you to get to this point in your research, you may find that the Belgian family may be unaware of grandfather, or great uncle, having fathered a child, especially if he himself never mentioned the subject or returned to Belgium before the pregnancy came to light.

Not all family history puzzles can be resolved. In due course, most of us will come across multiple brick walls and dead-ends in research. For most of us, the principal challenges lie in wait when we get beyond the era of civil registration and start to work through the much less reliable and comprehensive early 19th and late 18th century parish registers.

Others will be stymied at an earlier stage in their research, particularly those with immigrant or foreign ancestors. Even when this happens, as may be the case with your Grandjean connection, it is worth revisiting the problem every couple of years: new records are published and databases created, and what is not possible today may become possible in due course.

More generally, I have two pieces of basic practical advice for researchers confronted with more off-the-wall or unfamiliar problems. Firstly, as mentioned above, approach your local county record office or central reference library and seek advice from the archivists, who may be able to point you in the right direction.

Secondly, contact your nearest family history society which, again, may be able to recommend some avenues of enquiry which have not occurred to you, or to put you in touch with an expert or another researcher looking at the same kind of problems. A good place to start is to visit the Federation of Family History Societies’ website at http://www.ffhs.org.uk/members2/alpha.php - note that, as well as county and regional societies, there are also special interest groups in the Other section of its directory of member societies.’

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