Esplin, William: Service no. 53907

Family Search: Private William Anderson Esplin was born on 22 September 1887, in Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom. He married Catherine M. Millar on 14 June 1919, in Galt, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. They were the parents of at least 1 son and 3 daughters. He immigrated to Quebec City, Quebec, Canada in 1911 and lived in York, Ontario, Canada in 1911 and Galt, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada for about 10 years. He registered for military service in 1914. In 1914, at the age of 27, his occupation is listed as labourer. He died on 1 January 1968, in London, Ontario, Canada, at the age of 80, and was buried in Mount View Cemetery, Cambridge, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

One of the opportunities for researching soldiers is the fact that many soldiers that enlisted often enlisted with their “chums” at the same enlistment office. In an article about researching soldiers, it pointed out that since the service numbers were often assigned sequentially, if someone checked the preceding and preceding service numbers and they had the same date, there is a good chance that all those men knew each other.

In the case of my grandfather, when I did the initial research, I checked the 2 numbers preceding his service number (53902) and 2 numbers after and stopped as there appeared to be only one soldier that enlisted that day.

Luckily, my mother (William Robb Dewar’s 2nd child) remembered a family friend with the surname Esplin. The remembrance was that this gentleman, William Esplin, was a good friend of her father’s and that they served together in the 18th Battalion. They both joined on the same date and in the same town, Galt, Ontario.

As evidenced in his attestation papers, he joined on the same day as my Grandfather, October 26, 1914, which indicates that one needs to dig a little deeper into the attestation papers to uncover these insights. Thanks to my mother’s memory of William Esplin, another soldier is recognized, and the story of my Grandfather is filled out a little bit more.