Are you related to these three First World War casualties?

CWGC’s specialist unit are responsible for the recovery of the remains of Commonwealth War Casualties in France. In the past few years this has including three Scottish soldiers found with artefacts that give a good idea of who they were. We work with the Ministry of Defence’s Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre (JCCC) team who are the authority in charge of their formal identification.

 JCCC are now looking for family members of these three casualties to help them confirm identification by DNA comparison. If you believe you are a family member of these three men, please contact JCCC via DBS-MODWarDetectives@mod.gov.uk.

Pte David Gemmell

1st Battalion, Black Watch; killed in action 25 January 1915

David Gemmell was born in 1869 in Dundee to David Gemmell (1824 – 1904) and Mary Cable (1824 – 1902). He was the youngest of eight children; his siblings were:

Helen (born 1849)

Eliza, Jean and Jane (all listed as born in 1861)

Jessie (1866 – 1948)

Joan/Johanna (born 1855)

Georgina (born 1864)

The 1891 Census shows him aged 22 and living with his parents at Hilltown in Dundee. By the time of the next Census in 1901 he was a plumber and lodged in a house in Stobcross Street, Glasgow.

Three of David’s sisters married:

Jessie, married George Williamson and they had three sons, George (1896 – 1952), James (1899 – 1971) and Edwin (1903 – 1976)

Joan/Johanna married Jesse Carr in 1875 in Dundee

Eliza married Andrew Petrie Thomson

Pte George Brown

1st Battalion, Black Watch; killed in action 25 January 1915

George Brown was born in 1879 in Beath, Fife, Scotland to Archibald Brown and Elizabeth (known as Eliza or Lizzie) Drybur. He was one of nine children and his siblings were:

Mary (born 1870)

Eliza (born 1872)

Christina (born 1874)

Isabella (born 1876)

Catherine (born 1881)

Thomas (born 1884)

Janet (born 1886)

Archie (born 1889)

JCCC believe only George himself seems to have married. His wife was Elizabeth Scott and they had one daughter, Mary, who was born in 1910.

Pte John Wilson

6th Battalion, Black Watch; killed in action 30 July 1916

Little information is available for Pte John Wilson aside from showing that he was born in Gowanhill, Lanarkshire.

Initial research suggests that he was one of three children born to William and Grizel Hope Wilson (nee Brown). He had two sisters:

Helen Hutchison Wilson (commonly known as Helen Brown). She was born in Hutchesontown, Lanarkshire in 1891 and is believed to have married George Stewart in Dennistoun in 1921. She died in 1968.

Little is known of his other sister, Janet Wilson, other than that she was born in about 1890 in Govan.