Introduction
Henry Thomas Abbott enlisted in the Somerset Light Infantry and served overseas in Malta and India. He is included in the Hardington Roll of Honour of January 1915 because his mother lived in the village at that time. Little is known about him after the war, although he may have died in the Yeovil registration district in 1937.
Early life
Henry was born in late 1888 or early 1889 at Halstock, the seventh of ten children of Edward Abbott and his wife Sarah Jane (née Balsom).[1] The 1891 census recorded Edward as a farm labourer, with the family living in a four-room house on the Yeovil Road.
On 5 January 1897, Edward died of phthisis at the age of forty-eight, leaving Sarah Jane to support four young children, including Henry.[2] By 1901, she was working as a postwoman and had two boarders, one of whom was Albert Edward Clarke, a farm labourer five years her junior. Sarah Jane married Albert in late 1908 or early 1909 in the Yeovil registration district.
Shortly after their marriage, they moved to Hill End, Hardington Mandeville, where they lived in one of the cottages on Bridge Close Farm.
Military career
By April 1911, Henry was a private stationed in Malta. He served during the First World War and was included on Hardington’s Roll of Honour of January 1915.[3] In June 1915, a local newspaper reported that Mrs Clarke of Hill End had four sons on active service. Arthur George, Henry, and Alfred were serving with the Somerset Light Infantry, while Walter Charles was with the Territorial Force. At that time, Arthur was stationed in France, while Henry, Alfred and Walter were in India.[4]
Henry later served in Mesopotamia. His medal records list him as Private 8199 of the 2nd Somerset Light Infantry, attached to the 15th Divisional Signal Company, noting his theatre of war as 6(b), the code for Mesopotamia. He was awarded the British War Medal and Victory Medal. The absence of the 1914–15 Star indicates that, although he was serving in India in 1915, he did not enter a qualifying theatre of war before 1916.
Later life
Little is known about his later life. He has not been identified on the 1921 census. He may be the Henry Thomas Abbott whose death was registered in the Yeovil registration district in the fourth quarter of 1937 at the age of forty-nine.
References
[1] Civil registration birth certificate; family reconstitution.
[2] Death certificate of Edward Abbott.
[3] World War I Service Medal and Award Rolls, 1914-1920; Western Chronicle, 5 February 1915, p.6.
[4] Western Chronicle, 25 June 1915, p. 6.
