Find GPO War Heroes on Ancestry

Records of over twelve thousand General Post Office (GPO) War Heroes from both World Wars are now available for the first time through Ancestry, the UK’s largest family history site.  

The First World War had a huge impact on the postal service testing it to the limit and changing the way it operated forever. Over 75,000 postal workers went to war, over 8,000 of them never to return and many thousands more were injured, many permanently. 

To commemorate the postal workers who gave their lives James Trezies, a postal worker himself, decided to create a unique record and memorial to all his fallen colleagues, from the two world wars. Over three years in the mid-1950s Trezies researched and hand-wrote every name of the fallen on individual sheets of cream wove paper in alphabetical order.   

The completed pages were bound into two volumes, one for each conflict and later donated to The Postal Museum in 2015 by The Post Office Fellowship of Remembrance (POFR). Each of the names and personal details were transcribed by a volunteer and then this information was made available online at the GPO War Heroes website, which was created by The Postal Museum and supported by the POFR and BT Archives. 

In total there are 12,830 names across the two books each listing the military unit the individual served with and the part of the Post Office in which they worked.  

The digitisation of these books allows everyone to fully explore the remarkable and unique legacy these books create and provides a valuable resource for those interested in this story more broadly or those researching their own family history.  

The Postal Museum and Ancestry have collaborated to make these records available to an even greater audience. As of November 2020, the books are now also searchable on the Ancestry website. The POFR volumes along with the multitude of records already available on Ancestry including British Postal Service Appointment Books, 1737-1969 allow you to discover the true stories of those who served.   

Read more about GPO War Heroes.