Hello! I hope everyone's day is going well!
I am researching an ancestor and I need to know which soldiers were positioned in Château du Bois-Robin in Aumale, Seine-Maritime, Normandie, France during the First World War, more specifically around the July/August in 1915.
Now for the full story, to make things more clear:
In my family, there was always a well-known fact that my great-grandfather (let's call him Lou) was assigned his last name of a later husband of his mother.
Due to a second lockdown, I decided to do some research to find out who is the real father of my great-grandfather. I already know some details. Today I found a birth certificate of the French town he was born in, stating the identity of his "parents" and the hour of birth + location. However, those parents are the parents of his mother, my great-great-grandmother, suggesting that she asked her parents to register Lou as their child because the real father was out of the picture at the time. Now, Lou was born in the middle of the Great War (April 1916), and the birth location is a castle (Château du Bois-Robin in Aumale, France) in the town he was born in, so maybe I could assume Lou's mother lived inside that castle.
I'm also assuming soldiers were stationed in that castle, so maybe Lou's father was to be a soldier?
Now, my question is: how would I go about finding out who the lord of that castle was, and which troops were stationed in that castle? I tried googling the castle (even in French), and I can't find anything on it except postcards without any information responding to my questions.
Thanks for your help in advance fellow Redditors!
Hi!
Do you understand French?
I used some websites to reconstruct my great grand father path during ww1, but they are all in French.
Here is a website that compile all Operation Diaries from a lot of regiments (http://chtimiste.com/regiments/regiments2.htm). I haven't find a way to look for a precise location and then have the corresponding regiments. But you can probably look for each regiments. For what I can see, British units may also have been in that sector, so it may be interresting to look that way.
I was unable to find any usage of the castle during ww1, for now we don't know if it was requisitionned to welcome officers, an hospital, etc.
Without the name of the father, it will be hard to find him.
If you understand french, you can also dig into the archive and try to find who own the castle at that time, maybe it will give you more information.
I hope you will find what you want!
Hello there! As your question is related to looking for identification/information regarding military personnel, our Guide on Military Identification may be of use to you. It provides a number of different resources, including how to request service records from a number of national agencies around the world, as well as graphical aids to assist in deciphering rank, unit, and other forms of badges or insignia. While the users here may still be able to lend you more assistance, hopefully this will provide a good place to start!