Book to honour lives of service

A PROJECT detailing the lives of World War servicemen featured on the honour board at Saint Paul’s Anglican Church is set to be released soon.

Called Lives of Honour, Ballarat East and the Great War, the project explores the backgrounds of the board’s 177 listed men who served during World War One.

Organised by the church, the work was written and researched by historian Anne Doggett, who said, for her, the project went beyond the subjects’ wartime experiences.

“It’s really a series of biographies,” she said. “I did quite a lot of research into their WWI records, but I also researched their family situation, who their grandparents were, the types of homes they lived in.

“I wanted to use as much as I could find about their lives as a whole. I didn’t want it to be just a military study but a general one on the social and economic side, all those aspects.

“We actually found a lot were ex-orphanage boys, about 47 of them, so I was able to find out quite a lot about their lives and family situation which gives quite a bit of insight into disadvantaged families too.”

In research for the work, Doggett interviewed the servicemen’s descendants who also provided letters and photos, and pored through genealogical records and newspaper archives.

The project is slated to receive a boost of $9,102 in funding from the federal government’s Saluting Their Service Program as well as from the City of Ballarat’s Community Impact Grant Program, which Doggett said would assist with printing and publishing.

“It’ll be wonderful to receive it because it will mean we won’t have to raise money,” she said. “The Saluting Their Service grant especially would cover the entire cost.

“St Paul’s has a bit of a dwindling congregation and they’re really flat out coping with some big celebrations this year.”

Doggett expects the book will be launched alongside an event acknowledging the church’s 170th anniversary later this year.