26 June 2008

Early Aviators

Ancestry.co.uk has a new database of 28,000 index cards and 34 photograph albums of aviators who obtained flying licences (certificates) from the Royal Aero Club between 1910-1950.

Information listed on the cards includes: name, birth date, birthplace, nationality, rank or profession, date and place of certificate, and certificate number.

This isn't just people from the UK. Searching keyword Canada yielded 548 hits, Australia 401, New Zealand 241.

Keyword Ottawa found 31 hits, young men born between 1885 and 1926, and mostly in the 1890s.

George Samuel Abbott, Robert Fotheringham Anderson, William Bickle Banfield, John Rudolphus Booth, Henry John Lawrence Botterell, George Breadner, John Bernard Brophy, Cecil Gordon Brunson, Charles Hampden Stanley Butterworth, Gordon Thomas Bysshe, Peter Godwin Chance, Henry Coyles, Albert Edward Cuzner, Arthur Le Roy Dean, Brian Devlin, John Roland Devlin, George Jarvis Farnworth, John Howard Glen, Joseph Gorman, Joseph Wilfrid Hamel, Walter Robert Kenny, Keith Dunham Lewis, Wilfred Ferguson MacDonald, Donald H Masson, James Arthur Menzies, Edmund Thomas Morris, Clement John Poulin, Norman MacKie Scottm Robert Kenneth Slater, Walter Eddy Soper, Douglas Archibald Lambert Turner

Most received their licences in the UK in 1916 and 1917, some in the USA and two in Toronto. Three are listed on the card as killed during WW1.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am always pleased to see new databases and this one is of particular interest, not because it affects any research I am doing, but because it underlines the range of source material that is being identified, scanned and made available. It also makes me wonder whether similar records for Canadian aviators could not be gathered into a database and made available on Ancestry or at Library and Archives Canada (LAC). If memory serves me, files on individual pilots can be found in the Transport Canada records, once referred to as Record Group 12 at LAC.