Hi there,
I'm a serving member in Saskatoon, SK. My great great grandfather, Charles Nicolle was the first Quartermaster in the NWMP. Years ago. I spoke to the Museum personnel who advised me that Nicolle had two Reg. number's?One Reg.# is hard to forget because he's the only member to ever have a 1/2 put into his Reg.# which 23 1/2. After a short career, he settled in the Q\'uapple Valley NE of Moose Jaw and built a ranch which is now a Heritage site and bird conservation area.
Supt. Nicolle is buried about 2 km's from my family farm, at the St. Columbia Church. My family has taken care of the church and grounds from the time the church was built. His grave stone the largest one on the grounds.
I have always wanted to put something on his stone to indicate he was a NWMP Officer. Can you help?
Thanks,
Scott Delahey
scott.delahey@rcmp-grc.gc.ca
From the History files of Vet. Jack White: Jack explains: 'Officer numbers [for the NWMP] were not assigned until about 1900, then Officers were numbered retroactively to 1873.
ReplyDeleteIn doing so, Supt. Nicolle (now many years out of the Force) was somehow overlooked.
In a perfect world, he would have been O.24 sequentially. But, to place his number in the proper order, he was squeezed in to the Officer's List as a "half" number.
So, his Regimental# is 23 1/2!
From the History files of Vet. Jack White
October 10, 2009 6:59 PM
Post a Comment
Dear Friends,
Thank you for your note. I try to reply to all messages but some of them require a little more research and time or reflection.
Please be assured that I will answer your note.
Yours truly,
BuffaloJoe
Links to this post
Create a Link
Newer Post Older Post Home
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
Hi, My g grandfather left IRELAND in the late 1800s and subsequently joined the RCMP. There is a large police history with our family over here and I would love to be able to add my great grandfather's service to this. His name was Hugh McCullough, dob 1866 and he was from Bessbrook, near Newry, Co.Down/Armagh. I have traced his history and there is a gap and I think this is when his service with RCMP was. He later went on the join police in Kearny NJ until his retirement in 1930 or so. Thank you for taking time to read this and any information would be very much appreciated. Anne Wallace (annewallace7@hotmail.com)
ReplyDeleteThis is from Library and Archives Canada:
ReplyDeleteOfficers
The officer cadre in the NWMP was never very large. From 1873-74 to 1904, about 140 men were commissioned officers, including five commissioners and more than 20 medical doctors and veterinarians. When the Mounted Police was first organized in 1873, there was no administrative need to assign a service number to each officer. It was not done in the military and there were only 23 officers. As time went by, however, the number of officers increased. In the aftermath of the 1885 Rebellion, for instance, the NWMP was increased from 608 to 1,039 men of all ranks, including 50 officers. Only in 1900 were officers given numbers, starting with the first officers appointed in 1873. For instance, the first permanent commissioner of the Mounted Police, Sir George French, long retired by 1900, was Officer 1 or O.1.
It was not a perfect system, nor were records (or memories) complete. As a result, some officers were overlooked when numbers were assigned. Lieutenant Colonel William Osborne Smith, interim commissioner in the fall of 1873, is number O.2½ and Charles Nicolle, who served briefly as Quartermaster in 1874-75, has marched into history as officer number O.23½. James M. Walsh, one of the first officers, was allotted number O.7; he resigned in 1883, but in 1897, he was reappointed by the government to take charge of the Mounted Police in the Yukon. For some reason, he was assigned another number, O.109. With or without numbers, service records exist for all officers of the NWMP from 1873 to 1904, including medical doctors and veterinarians.
All officers were appointed by the government of the day by order-in-council, including those who were commissioned from the ranks. Most officers' files are rich in detail, usually more than those of the men in the ranks. Many include extensive documentation on individual careers, and some also contain information about marriages and children.
Randy Nicolle