The following appeared in the 'Derbyshire Times' on the 25th of August 1917, under the above headline:

“News has been received during the past week of the death in action of Private George N. A. Baxter, Royal Fusiliers. Mr. Baxter was senior assistant master at the Matlock Council School, where he had laboured with much success since September 1912. His former pupils will cherish the memory of one of Nature’s kindest gentlemen…… A noble life well lived and a passionate desire to faithfully do his duty ruled his every action, and as he lived so he died. A diligent student – rather than a man of action – he offered his services to his country freely and voluntarily at his country’s call. He joined the Royal Fusiliers as a private, and despite the urgent entreaties of his friends, remained one to the end. In December 1916 he was wounded in several places, and was invalided home, but returned to France in April last. He was on sentry duty in the front trench when a shell struck him, and before the stretcher bearers could reach him, he had passed away. His comrades, who appreciated his fine character, reverently buried him in a grave behind the lines. Private Baxter, who was 26 years of age and single, was educated at Goldsmiths College [University of London] from 1909 to 1911. His parents reside at Ludlow, Shropshire.”

55010 Private George Nelson Alan Baxter of the 8th Battalion Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment) was born in Northenden, Cheshire in 1890.

His parents were Charles Nelson Baxter (born in Stowe, Shropshire in 1855) and Georgina Baxter, née Toll (born in Pendlebury, Salford in Lancashire in 1859). They had married in the Chorlton (Lancashire) Registration District in 1883.

The 1901 census found the ten-year old George living with his parents and siblings at 15 Artillery Terrace, West Stoke, Guildford, Surrey, and confirms his father to have been a cabinet maker.

George’s siblings were: Beatrice Florence (born in 1885); and Grace Evelyn May (born in 1887).

The death of George’s mother, Georgina Baxter (née Toll), at the age of forty-eight, was recorded in the Guildford (Surrey) Registration District in 1908. George would have been aged seventeen when his mother died.

The 1911 census located the twenty-one year old George, residing as a boarder in the 113 Waller Road, New Cross, London home of William Wallace Ayling (aged seventy-two) and Sarah Ann Ayling (aged sixty-seven), husband and wife. At that time, William Wallace Ayling was a retired accountant, and George a student at Goldsmith's College.

In the Edmonton (Middlesex) Registration District in 1914, George’s father, Charles Nelson Baxter, took a new wife; Gertrude née Moister (born in Holloway, London in 1880). George was aged twenty-three at the time.

The service records of George Nelson Alan Baxter have not survived. However, the publication ‘Soldiers Died in the Great War 1914-1919’ shows that, when he enlisted in Matlock, Derbyshire, he confirmed Northenden in Cheshire as his birthplace, and he gave Matlock as his then current place of residence. His original service number with the Royal Fusiliers was 10742.

His Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) entry, records that George Nelson Alan Baxter died on the 10th of August 1917 (when he would have been aged twenty-six) and that his name is engraved on the Arras Memorial for the missing presumed dead:

“the Arras Memorial [being] in the Faubourg-d'Amiens Cemetery, which is in the Boulevard du General de Gaulle in the western part of the town of Arras, Pas de Calais Region, France.”

The 1921 census found George’s father, Charles Nelson Baxter (aged sixty-three) and George’s stepmother Gertrude Baxter née Moister (aged forty-one), living at 3 Castle View Terrace, Ludlow in Shropshire, with Charles self-employed as a cabinet maker and instructor in woodwork at a local grammar school.