Each December, just when the NRIs begin to wend their way to India, I get a few emails. These have to do with queries about ancestors, places where they resided and whether I have heard about them. In most instances, the details are sketchy, at best — name, a broad idea of locality, a place of employment, and year of death. I usually regret my inability to assist, given the meagre background information.
This year has been no different. I have an email about a Percy Charles Wood, born on October 23, 1874, and who worked at the Perambur railway and was ‘part of the southern Indian railway army’. The family believes he lived in Chennai or Perambur between 1892 and 1929 and is keen to find his residential address and trace his roots. Now what do you do with these facts? At first read it is clear that Wood worked in the Perambur Railway Workshops, then the maintenance and repairs facility of the Madras Railway Company (MRC). Given that he was born in 1874 and may have entered employment 20 years later, he would have joined the MRC, which around 15 years later merged with the Southern Mahratta Railway and became the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway Company (M&SM). Wood must have continued with the new entity and 1929 tallies with the year he must have retired from service, for the age of superannuation in the private railways of yore was 55.
