Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

This information comes from various sources including the Cecil family history book written by Marge Cecil titled The Legacy of Charles James Stratton Cecil and his descendants.
He was born at Wycheproof, Victoria in 1895. He was the first child of George Cecil Senior and Marion Cooper and their wedding in 1893,was the first in the Mallee region of Victoria. George had nine younger siblings,born over a 20 year period from 1896 to 1915. His younger siblings, in birth order were David, William, Murray, Alexander, Albert, and Myra, Ray, Ida and Hilda.
Two of his younger siblings,William and Myra died in infancy, not surviving beyond one year.
George Stratton Cecil was the third generation of Cecils to live in the Australian colony.His paternal grandfather Charles James Stratton Cecil had come to Australia as a 16 year old,living firstly in Tasmania, then Victoria.
George s father, also named George Stratton Cecil was born at Burrumbeet Victoria in 1858, and grew the first crop of wheat in the Mallee region of Victoria in 1851.
The family moved to Gippsland for a period of time but returned to theMallee and Culgoa township before the by then two children oldest started school.Georges childhood was spent in the Culgoa area, with his younger brothers and sisters,riding horses, hunting and trapping,sometimes with their father.
As a 14 year old, George started work at several local properties around 1910. He joined the Australian Imperial Force in 1914.His younger brother Dave joined up soon after. His father now 61 years old,was still hunting and trapping and Marion was keeping vegetable garden and poultry to feed the family.While his two sons were away at war,George zcecil Senior obtained employment managing the weighbridge for wheat at Culgoa in 1917. All Mallee wheat grown for export was weighed at the Culgoa weighbridge before going by rail to Melbourne Port for transport overseas.George Sen held this position until the year before he died, 1931.
When George Stratton Cecil junior and Dave enlisted in 1919, baby sister Ida was 6 years old, and Hilda was 4. George junior left Australia on the ship Port Lincoln in 1916,from Melbourne. He served in both England and France, the last rank he held,when the war ende,was as a driver, his last unit being the Army Service Corps.
George junior married Gertie Cook of Downton Wiltshire,in 1918- 1919. Gertie was a nurse in the local psychiatric facility,known then as a
lunatic asylum. They returned to Australia in the SS Port Lincoln and along with David and his new bride were welcomed at a civic reception in Culgoa.
They settled on a Soldier Settlement fruit block, eight miles from Red Cliffs.Their third child and first son Kenneth, died in infancy from summer diarrhoea, and is buried in the local cemetery there. Georgr junior and Gertie sold the Red Cliffs property in 1930, and bought two blocks to grow vegetables,and farm poultry, close to where George Senior and Marion his parents were living. By this time George junior and Gertie had five children, Phyllis, Daphne, Eileen ,Allan and Cliff. Around this time,his younger brother Dave,developed full blown tuberculosis, probably
contracted in England, and died soon after. His dather George Cecil Senior died suddenly in 1932,and his mother Marion in 1933. His younger sisters Ida and Hilda were 19 and 17 and inherited the family home, George Seniors younger brother Henry, aka Uncle Harry stayed with them until Ida married several years later.
George Stratton Cecil Junior s youngest son Maxwell Charles Cecil was born at Culgoa in 1933. George Straton Cecil junior diedin 19r9, after a stay in the local hospital for treatment of a suspected clot in his lower leg,sustained when he stepoed accidentally into an unfinished post hole
He was well known and respected in the district and people travelled long distances to attend his funeral.
As none of the children were old enough to take on the family property Gertie took the family to live in Swan Hill at 5 Pye Street. During the last three years of WW2 ,the house at 5 Pye St was home to Gertie and the three boys, Phyllis and her husband and first child, Daphne and her two children and Eileen and her husband ,twelve people in all.
When the war ended Phyllis and family moved to Stacey farm at Sea Lake, Daphne remarried and went to live in Moulamein,Allan got apprenticeship with Rays Bakery in Swan Hill,Cliff got apprenticeship at local garagem Eileen and husband moved to Campbelltown in NSW. Max was apprenticed to George Florence a local cobbler and boot maker. Gertie died from heart trouble in1966 not long after vacating the Pye St house. Max married Barbara Chalk in 1972 in Swan Hill.
George Stratton Cecil Juniors children had nineteen grandchildren, fifty one great grandchildren and to 2002, 31 great, great grandchildren. Max was the last surviving adult son of George Stratton Cecil Junior, dying at 82 years of age after complications from a leg injury, similar to his father, in July 2015.Max is survived by his daughter Alicia,and her two sons. .Allan and Cliffs wives, Louise and Georgie,both of the Turner Barber clan are still going strong.