Recently, I was able to obtain an image of a page from my grandmother's 1917 autograph book.
Her name was Gwenyth Jean Stacy (born 16 Dec 1902 at St Peters, Adelaide, South Australia) and at the time she was living with her parents and sisters at Henley Beach which is now a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia.
The date of 9 Jul 1917 is written with names next to three of the photos but I do not know whether that was the date they were taken on.
I have been able to identify the named female as Lorna (or Loran) Wallace Linklater (born 18 Jul 1901 at Semaphore, Port Adelaide, South Australia) and have since contacted a distant relative of hers via Ancestry.com and emailed a copy of Lorna's photograph to her.
At this stage I am not attempting to identify the second female photo because it is unnamed. It does not appear to be my grandmother, either of her sisters who were eight and eleven years younger than her, or my great grandmother (Louisa Margaret nee Sellers), and its placement on this page suggests that she was a friend rather than relative of my grandmother.
However, I am very hopeful of being able to identify the two soldiers: the one named Williams in this question; and the other in Identifying Australian soldier named Bennett in World War I photograph (1917)?
He appears to be named Les or Leo A. Williams.
Can anyone help me with reading the handwriting and identifying him?
I will then try to contact his family and provide them with an image of his photograph. Unfortunately his surname is very common, and although his second initial appears to be A
I think his first name may be Leo or Les. I am more than happy to share the pleasure of discovering who he was with anyone keen to look at Australian military records.
Some places that I have looked but that are worth revisiting are:
- National Archives of Australia: Army – World War I: 1914–18
- Australian War Memorial: First World War, 1914–18
One last piece of background, that may be relevant to this page, is that my late mother told me that my great grandmother held parties for Australian soldiers. I do not know (and wish I had checked) whether it was this great grandmother of mine, or my mother's other grandmother, but I now suspect that it was this one.