Researching Chelsea Hospital / Pensioners Records (General)

by Roger Griffiths , Sunday, July 29, 2012, 19:44 (4495 days ago) @ Jefff

A fascinating and most useful post Jeff. First thing that surprised me is that ex Militia were qualified as Chelsea Pensioners. Hundreds of thousands of men went through the regular army and the various militia and yeomanry system units in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Even the reduced number of men who 'went to pension' would not have fitted into Chelsea Hospital, the building being extant.

I do hope you continue your researches and post results on here. The subject is most important for family history for males who were 16 to 60 between 1793 to 1815 alone. Those males were required to volunteer for the regular army or join one of the militia type units. Sea adjacent counties were responsible for manning the Royal Navy. Gloucestershire was not one of them.

After 1793 the regular infantry was incresed to 130 regiments but by early 1800's was set at 104. The militia had a similar number of regiments. There was a lot else, supplimentary militia, volunteers and fencibles battalions. Records for all these are at PRO Kew.

Relevant militia regiment for FoD was the North Gloucestershire Militia.