Absalom Snowley

Born: 28 September 1887

Died: 14 September 1914

Rank and Regiment: Private 7722 in the 1st Battalion of the Coldstream Guards

Resting Place: body unrecovered

Memorials: War Memorial, Great Hockham and; La Ferte-Sous-Jouarre Memorial, Seine-et-Marne, France

Absalom was born on 28th September 1887 in Barford to Herbert and Emma Snowley (nee Pratt). He was the eldest of the 12 children and was baptised at St Philips, Heigham, on 23rd November 1894, together with his younger siblings Rosa, Herbert and Edward.

He and Rosa started school together in Norwich on 2nd October 1893, at which time the family was living in Grapes Hill, Norwich.

By the time of the 1901 Census, aged only 13, he was working in a Printer’s Machine Room and the family were living at West Wymer.

In the 1911 Census he is described as Outfitter Porter and later that year he married Caroline Vincent at Old Catton. They had three children, Hilda, Herbert and Gladys, the last of them born in October 1914 after her father’s death. The family had moved to Great Hockham, and Absalom appears on the Register of Electors there both for 1914 and, indeed, for 1915. Some sources suggest that at some point he was resident in Barnsley, but this does not appear to have been the case.

His military records do not survive, but presumably he had joined the Coldstream Guards before the Great War broke out, so that he was among the trained men who could be sent overseas on the outbreak of the war. He appears in de Ruvigny’s Roll of Honour in the terse terms

“Reported missing in action 14 September 1914 and now assumed killed”.

His effects, amounting to £4 0s. 3d., were paid out to his widow Caroline together with a War Gratuity of £5.

His body was never recovered and he is commemorated on the Memorial at La Ferte-Sous-Jouarre, Seine-et-Marne, France, and on the War Memorial at Great Hockham.

War Memorial, Great Hockham

La Ferte-Sous-Jouarre Memorial, France