National Police Remembrance Day 2019

September 29th, the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel, is also National Police Remembrance Day in Australia, commemorating the lives of officers who died in the line of duty. I have a few police in my family, most notably Thomas Skermer, International Man of Chicanery. Thankfully, the rest were nothing like that at all, and today always makes me think of one of the 'good guys', Walter John Wissell.

Walter Wissell was my 1st cousin 3x removed. He was born on 11 Apr 1881 in Echunga, the area where most of his family lived including poor dear Nellie Cunningham who was Wissell's first cousin. His father James had a dashing backstory, as he is believed to have served in the US Civil War before starting a career in whaling and jumping ship in Australia. James married the young widow Janet Brown nee Gall in 1867 and the couple had 7 children in addition to Janet's existing two from her first marriage.

Walter was a policeman. Given he was not a mounted trooper, his duties were very different to those of Thomas Skermer. He was mostly focused on all the normal duties which still make up much of police work now - detecting and apprehending criminals. While stationed in Kadina, he was given the job of arresting a particularly violent criminal, and he was fatally injured in the process. The SA Police History group described it as follows: "He had approached William Dibballs, a 39-year-old labourer whose behaviour in Graves St had become somewhat raucous on a Saturday evening in February, 1919. The patient police officer reasoned with Dibballs, whom he asked to behave and head for home. But the troublemaker, rather than co-operate, struck Wissell with a forceful punch to the face. Each man then struggled to overpower the other, until Wissell was able to bring Dibballs under control and arrest him... Wissell became gravely ill with pneumonia soon after the attack.  Although he received frequent medical treatment, the husband and father of four died in Kadina."

Details about Walter Wissell's death reported in The Observer and The Register

During his time in the police force, Walter had been an active member of the South Australian Police Association, a group which had been formed in 1911 and which today still carries out the mission of representing the members of SAPOL on all industrial matters. The Association believes that Walter was transferred to Kadina as a direct result of his involvement in a pay dispute and that as such his death was a direct result of his involvement in the union. As part of their centenary commemorations, the Association organised to have Walter's grave at West Terrace Cemetery refurbished, and a service was held by his grave to acknowledge his contributions to keeping South Australians safe, as well as helping his fellow police officers.

The refurbished grave of Walter Wissell at West Terrace Cemetery

Walter's grave lies in one of the many less-maintained sections of the cemetery, and so his grave stands out among the others. It's great to see an organisation value their pioneers and heritage in such a visible way.

Walter John Wissell

Why you should order certificates - employment information

I've mentioned previously that I have some rather significant brick walls with my mother-in-law's family. That's right, the woman whose grandparents are surnamed possibly James, unknown, unknown and Smith. Her paternal grandmother, possibly surnamed James, married William Taylor (who was definitely NOT her grandfather), and then Walter Herbert Russell, who I mentioned I'd had no joy tracking down.

When doing family history on a budget, it's easy to omit ordering certificates. The information such as names, dates and places can sometimes be located elsewhere, so all you're finding is detail, right? Well, on Elsie and Walter's wedding certificate, one of the details I had discovered about him was that he was working as a Ganger, which could mean 'a foreman of a group of labourers', or possibly a rail track worker.

Join GenealogySA to access low cost transcriptions... especially compared to the cost of SA certificates!

Now, many of the details on that certificate are inaccurate, as it common to any document linked to Elsie (or, as I prefer to think of her, liar-liar-pants-on-fire.) However, I was working from the assumption the employment was accurate, having been provided by Walter rather than Elsie. This lead me to consider he might be a match for an electoral record on Ancestry for a Ganger living in Rodinga, NT in 1937. I'd always suspected the marriage had collapsed, but had been searching for him in NSW where Elsie had briefly lived. This prompted me to turn my attention to other states and the NT.

While I couldn't locate him in any other NT records, I did find a WA record for a Walter H Russell who died in 1945. There was no evidence to particularly suggest it might be him, but there were no other records even close to matching so I thought 'what the hell?' and sent away for the certificate. This is what came back.

That's a whole lotta 'unknowns' right there...

A funny thing: I've never received a certificate with more unknowns, yet this has told me exactly the bits I needed to know. He was 56 and born in Anna Creek, so definitely my guy! It also tells me all the things I didn't already know, his illness, death, and burial which was witnessed by local Kimberleys identity Robert Rowell. It also explains why nobody seemed to know what had happened. Even now, that is a very remote part of Australia, let alone in 1945! Having been born in Anna Creek, a highly remote part of SA, Walter probably felt right at home, but it sure makes a man hard to find!

Cockatoo Island, death place of Walter Herbert Russell. I'd tell you how far that is from Anna Creek, but Google won't calculate it because it's apparently just too off-grid!! Maybe 2400kms/1490mi?

So, there you go, order those certificates and find answers in the obscure details. One slight obscure-detail question though... two children, one deceased? I only know about one of those! More questions!!!