salonika

Tragic.

He joined the army under age . Suffered a lot of sickness. Came home but enlisted again, The poor guy was dead by age 18. What a sad story.

According to CWGC website he was Private 544. Son of Mrs. M. A. Evans, of 13, Tyr Nest, Bonymaen Rd., Swansea. Public family tree on Ancestry shows he was the son of John and Mary Ann Evans (nee Francis) and was born in Swansea circa 1899. In 1901 the family were living at 8 Owens Row in Swansea where Mr Evans was a Lead Smelter. By 1911 they had moved to another house in the same street at 5 Owen's Row, Kilvey Road, Foxhole, Swansea. Ivor had 3 older brothers and one younger.

Help piece together the Life Stories of more than 8 million men and women who made a contribution during the First World War at www.livesofthefirstworldwar.org/

The 1901 census has an 11 year old Charles G. born at what looks like Portronan, Country Donegal and who was recorded at Scaitcliffe E.G, Egham Surry as a boarder.(Apologies, but the census enumerators hand-writing is appalling)

Scaitcliffe was a day/boarding prep school for boys aged 6-13 in Egham, Surrey. After merging with Virginia Water school, the school is now co-educational and known as Bishopsgate School. The school is located in a small village in Egham called Englefield Green near Windsor Great Park.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaitcliffe

There isn't an obvious match for Charles on the 1911 census.

The additional information on the CWGC site is that he was son of the late Col. B. J. Barton, A.D.C., D.L., and Mrs. Barton, of Portsalon, Co. Donegal; husband of Letty Barton, of The Garth, Ashford, Kent.
www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead/casualty/572143/BARTON,%...

It may be coincidence but in a piece on a well-to-do pair of spinsters from Dublin who grew up in this period and who moved in the circles of the Anglo-Irish gentry, there is a passing mention of a Barton family of Portsalon, Co Donegal.

"Golf was a particular passion of Letitia’s and she was a member of Carrickmines Golf Club in Dublin and Portsalon in Co. Donegal. This is a picture of a golf outing at Portsalon with members of the Barton family. The Overends and Bartons were related and both Letitia and Naomi spent quite a lot of time in Donegal with their cousins throughout their lives. For Letitia in particular it provided the only real contact she had with other children (or teenagers as we would say now) as her early life was dominated by adult company."
www.airfield.ie/who_we_are_overend_family.html

(Part of the reason they may well have remained spinsters is the devasting losses suffered amongst the eligible young men of their generation).

Many of the Kent Town memorials have been very well researched, although some of the associated documents are quite large - the one for Ashford Civic memorial is 46Mbps. These confirm that Charles was commemorated on both that memorial and the Ashford St Mary's one. Although it doesn't offer much additional information about his death, it does note that his father had been aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria and gives his mothers name as Mrs Ethel Barrow Barton.
www.kentfallen.com/PDF%20REPORTS/ASHFORD%20TOWN.pdf

I can't find an obvious candidate in England and Wales for the marriage of Charles and Letty, but of course they could have married in Ireland and then had some other reason to move to Kent.

I also could not find a citation for his Military Cross award in the London Gazette - in fact the only mention I could find of him was a note in the edition dates 28th July 1916 that a Temporary Lieutenant C G Barton of the Royal Inniskillings gave up the rank of Temporary Captain on ceasing to command a Company, effective 20th May 1916.
www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/29687/pages/7486

(PS - I too thought of David Niven when I saw the picture :-)

Charles Geoffrey Barton was the youngest of 8 children, (2 girls and 6 boys - all of the boys later becoming Servicemen; Lt Col B J Barton DSO [33rd]; Lt G Barton RN; Lt R Barton RGA; Maj E H Barton [10 R Innis Fus], and Capt C G Barton MC [5 R Innis Fus]).
Details are at: The Peerage.com www.thepeerage.com/p26800.htm#i267992

Charles Geoffrey Barton married Ethel Barrow Welldon on 27th March 1915; they had a daughter, Carol, b. 25 December 1915. Carol went to Oxford University (Lady Margaret Hall) and later married Lt Col Richard William Shepherd, (9 August 1941), they had 2 sons and a daughter. Ethel Barton died in 1971.

Help piece together the Life Stories of more than 8 million men and women who made a contribution during the First World War at www.livesofthefirstworldwar.org/

DSO awarded in New Year Honours (Military) 1 January 1917, published in the London Gazette of 29 December 1916. Promoted from Second Lieutenant to Lieutenant on 17 November 1897. London Gazette of 18 January 1898. Promoted to Captain on 10 October 1900 and having been Seconded for Service to the Militia Artillery as an Adjutant from 19 September 1903, he was 'restored to the regular establishment of the RGA on 15th February 1909 - London Gazette of 19 March 1909. Freegift W Van der Kiste married (13 Nov 1900) Evelyn Grace Shipley (1876-1939) of Salisbury, Wilts. They had four sons, one of whom, Wg Cdr Robert Edgar Guy Van der Kiste was a distinguished RAF pilot with Coastal Command in the Second World War - DSO, OBE, and twice Mentioned in Despatches. Other sons were William Reginald Robert Van der Kiste, b. 28 Oct. 1901; Edward Conway Van der Kiste, b.19 Ap. 1903; and John Clement Van der Kiste, b. 1907, who was killed in action in Belgium aged 33 when serving as a Captain with the North Staffordshire Regiment on 28 May 1940. A grandson, John Van der Kiste, son of Guy (above), is a noted historian and writer. Freegift W Van der Kiste married again in 1943.

Freegift, an unusual name.

Unusual, but not unique. There may be a family tradition of using this name - there's a glimpse of a Freegift William Vanderkiste, born 1792 in Cork, Ireland, son of Mark Vanderkiste and Mary Anne Osborne. He is listed as a Freeman of the City of Cork 1710-1841 at www.corkarchives.ie/media/freemen1710-1841.pdf There was also a Freegift Chamberlain (1758-1838) who, though born in London, fought as a Private soldier in the General Newell's Pennsylvania infantry in the American Revolutionary War of 1776. Perhaps there is a family connection. There appear to be strong roots of the Vanderkiste family in Pennsylvania, where the origin of their name might be from Sweden - 'Kiszt'.//

I couldn't find the name Van der Kiste in either Holland or Belgium, so a Dutch adaptation of a Swedish name seems plausible. It often happened to non-Dutch settlers in the Dutch colonies of NE America. In 1655 the Dutch overran the colony of New Sweden (modern PA and NJ) which fell under Dutch colonial administration from then on.

Mr John Van der Kiste, the historian grandson of Lieutenant Colonel Freegift William Van der Kiste, has provided the following details. Freegift was always known as "Bill". He possibly had three siblings. Margaret Elizabeth (b.1876); John Edward; and Robert, - but no dates of birth (or death) for the two latter. The surname, Van der Kiste, is Dutch, apparently a group of them arrived from Holland at about the time of the 1688/9 Glorious or 'bloodless' revolution, and settled in Southern Ireland, establishing themselves in or near Limerick. They were staunch Protestants and when the troubles in Ireland became serious, at about the time of the 1916 Easter Rising, the family came over to England, basing themselves in the Winchester area. To which I can add that during the Great War, John Edward Van der Kiste served in the Royal Marine Artillery. He was a Lieutenant in the Royal Marine Artillery in 1899, and a Captain in 1910, being relegated to the Royal Marines Reserve in 1917.//