Ancestry Magazine

The most rewarding research for two family historians was to honor an unsung hero who died far from home.

In 21 February 1945, an American fighter plane crashed down in the English countryside. Over the past five years, the little village of North Stifford in Essex had been no stranger to German, English, and American planes flying overhead. But this time a plane had fallen from the sky.

Thirteen-year-old Ken Rydings was attending school when the screech of the plane caught his attention. The next moment he heard an immense explosion. Ken didn’t know until later that day how close the plane had come to his neighborhood. It had crashed only 200 yards away from a primary school filled with young children.

Ken’s cousin, who was home on leave from the British Air Force, was one of the first people to reach the crash site. He quickly realized that the pilot, who had maneuvered the plane to ensure that it wouldn’t crash into any buildings, did not survive. The young American pilot, who served with the 55th Fighter Group of the 8th Army Air Force, was Second Lieutenant Samuel E. Kershaw.

When the war ended later that year, Ken and his family began to rebuild their lives. Ken finished school, began a career, married, and settled in the area. The site of the crash remained an open field for decades.

In the early 1990s, developers began making plans to create an enormous housing complex that would cover many acres of the crash site. The development was to be called Chafford Hundred.

As Ken watched the housing project grow, his thoughts went back to February 1945 and the American pilot who died there. He felt that something should be done to honor him.

Ken convinced the developers of Chafford Hundred to name a major street in Lieutenant Kershaw’s honor; he got formal approval in 1998, but now he needed to gather personal information on Lieutenant Kershaw and his family. As the weeks went by, it seemed to be an impossible task. He wrote to and spoke with various British institutions and organizations, and even contacted the U.S. embassy and veterans organizations with no success.

One day, Ken was reading the Manchester Genealogical Magazine when the surname Kershaw caught his attention. It is a common name in west central England, but the inquiry was from an American woman in Stuart, Florida.

I was the woman who submitted the query in the Manchester Genealogical Magazine; my maiden name is Kershaw. I received a letter from Ken postmarked England on 7 September 1998. Upon reading his letter, I was touched by his determination to recognize this American pilot for his personal sacrifice.

Ken stated in his letter, “I started out on my quest knowing only that a crash did occur, it has taken me so long to establish and verify certain facts, ” what in fact is proving most difficult of all is to obtain some form of personal profile of Samuel E. Kershaw.”

I knew all my Kershaw family members in the United States from the World War II era and Lieutenant Kershaw was not a relative. But I had experience putting queries on the Internet and had achieved great success, so I wrote back t o Ken and offered my assistance. I explained what I could do using the Internet, and suggested that we correspond via e-mail.

I submitted a query to GenForum under the surname Kershaw. Next, since I had used the National Personnel Records Center of Military Personnel in St. Louis, Missouri, in my own research, I submitted a written request for the military records of Samuel E. Kershaw. Ken had located Samuel’s military service number, so I included it with my request. Months passed without new information for the Samuel Kershaw we were researching. Ken and I corresponded via e-mail every few weeks.

Finally in January 1999, I received a response from the St. Louis Military Records department. The envelope contained a letter and copies of the Master Index Card with the names of three Samuel Kershaws. One of the three had died on 21 February 1945—a match to the crash date. The letter stated that many military records were lost in a fire in St. Louis back in 1973. This copy of the Master Index Card and some payroll sheets were the only records available on Lieutenant Kershaw. Luckily, his hometown of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and his birth date of 6 February 1922 were listed on the documents. I e-mailed Ken right away with the results.

Ken wrote back: “I commented to my wife that surely somewhere in the U.S.A. someone knew and loved him. Now I can at least say where he lived, how old he was, etc. to the developers of the housing project.” I will register this site with the Imperial War Museum to Samuel E. Kershaw, so come what may, he will take a place in the historical records of the war.”

We still didn’t have specifics on Samuel’s family so I decided to search the Internet for Kershaws in Doylestown. I was hoping that a family member might live in the small Pennsylvania town after all these years. I typed in the name Kershaw and the location of Doylestown, Pennsylvania, at Switchboard.com and was rewarded with one hit—a Ms. Mary Lou F. Kershaw.

I sent her a letter the next day, explaining the story of the American pilot in England and how Ken Rydings was looking for family members. Within a week, a letter arrived from Mary. She wrote that her ex-husband, Roy P. Kershaw, was the younger brother of Samuel. She stated that Samuel also had a sister named Florence who now lived in South Carolina and that Roy was retired and living in North Carolina. Samuel’s parents, Sam and Mary Kershaw, were now deceased. Roy had told her how the family had been very grief stricken on hearing of Samuel’s death in 1945. She included Roy’s mailing address, so I sent a letter to him right away. I also sent an e-mail to Ken who was overjoyed to finally learn of the family of Lieutenant Samuel E. Kershaw.

Within a few days, I received an e-mail message from Roy Kershaw. He told me that he and his sister Florence were grateful that we cared enough about their brother to locate his family. I let Roy know Ken’s e-mail address and they started corresponding with each other, sharing information about Samuel and the efforts in the village of North Stifford to honor him.

We learned from Roy that Samuel’s family had originally been told that the plane had crashed due to a problem with the oxygen supply. But Ken learned through his research of later military accident reports that metal fatigue had caused the left wing to break away and bring the plane down.

Samuel’s body was sent back to Pennsylvania and he was buried at the American Legion Cemetery in Doylestown. The town had renamed a street in 1945 in honor of their fallen hometown boy. Samuel had left behind a wife, Winnie Ward, but the couple had no children. Roy also sent a photograph to Ken of his brother in his military uniform.

The new housing project at Chafford Hundred constructed a major entrance road and named it Kershaw Close in memory of the American pilot. Ken also worked to see that a memorial plaque was erected on the street so future generations would know what had happened on t hat English soil so many years before.

On 3 September 1999, a ceremony was held at Chafford Hundred with Ken Rydings as the guest of honor. He unveiled the plaque before the press, friends, and family. The date also marked the sixtieth anniversary of Britain’s entry into World War II. The plaque and the road were dedicated to Lt. Kershaw’s memory for his ultimate sacrifice. The plaque reads:

This close is named in memory of 2nd Lt. Samuel E. Kershaw who served with the 55th fighter group of the 8th U.S. Army Air Force and whose plane crashed on this site during World War II.

Born the 6th of February 1922
Doylestown, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Died 21st of February 1945
North Stifford Essex
Remembered

A few months later, in December 1999, Roy Kershaw stopped in Stuart, Florida, to meet me. And in March 2000, Ken Rydings traveled from England to the United States. During his visit in Stuart, I arranged for one of the local newspapers to interview Ken so that his many years of research would be recognized in print in the United States. Ken also traveled to North Carolina to meet Roy.

The experience turned out to be a most unusual family research project. But Ken and I were both grateful for the opportunity to not only bring families together but to assist in the worthy recognition of a fallen American military hero.

Alice L. Luckhardt graduated from Florida State University with a degree in social science education. Combining her love of family history with her love of American history, she has written much of her family’s history into story form.

Editor’s Note: This story first appeared in Megan Smolenyak’s In Search of Our Ancestors: 101 Inspiring Stories (Adams Media Corp., 2000).