PRIVATE FRED BOARDMAN
EAST KENT REGIMENT (THE BUFFS)
22ND DECEMBER 1916 AGE 32
BURIED: PHILOSOPHE BRITISH CEMETERY, MAZINGARBE, FRANCE
It seems as though Fred Boardman's widow, Sarah, must have emigrated to Canada after her husband's death. He was certainly still living in Britain in December 1915 when he enlisted in Denton, Lancashire, the town in which he was born. However, when the time came for Sarah Boardman to send an inscription to the War Graves Commission she gave her address as: 25, East 25th St., Mount Hamilton, Hamilton, Ontario.
The inscription is interesting. These are Abraham Lincoln's words as carved on the American Civil War Memorial in Edinburgh, dedicated to the Scots who both fought and died in the war - on the side of the Union. The words are based on a letter Lincoln wrote to the military Governor of Louisiana on 13 March 1864. It's a private letter, written on the eve of a Convention which:
"among other things, will probably define the election franchise. I barely suggest for your private consideration, whether some of the coloured people may not be let in as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks. They would probably help, in some trying times to come, to keep the jewel of liberty within the family of freedom. But this is only a suggestion, not to the public, but to you alone."
You can see that Mrs Boardman used the words on the statue in Edinburgh rather than Lincoln's own. Fred Boardman was a silk hat finisher, a business in which both his mother and his father had worked before him. He married Sarah on 27 December 1909 and by the time he attested on 8 December 1915 he had a son. He was killed in the trenches near Bethune on 22 December 1916.