The following is a teaser from an article in the the December 26, 2012 edition of WicklowPeople.ie. It’s interesting in that it features a British soldier wounded in the Battle of New Orleans – a battle that actually occurred after the offical end of the War of 1812 between the United States and Britain.
THE RECORDS of a Wicklow soldier, Private Hugh Burke, one of the so-called ‘Green Redcoats’, have been published online for the first time by leading family history site findmypast.ie.
These records are part of a major collection of newly digitised records of those pensioned from the British army by the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham.
The records contain the names and discharge documents of almost 20,000 soldiers held at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham from 1783 to 1822. The task of cataloguing the records took a team of 14 people from the Friends of The National Archives volunteer group just over three years and includes the records of 19,109 soldiers.
Among them is Private Hugh Burke from Wicklow, who was pensioned from the army on the 26 June 1816 after four years’ service. He was deemed unfit for further service after receiving ‘a gunshot wound to the left shoulder received in action near New Orleans in America on the 8th of January 1815’.
Thanks for sharing information with us on British Army Records!