Otto Charles Wessely, son of Charles and Louise Bauer Wessely, was born in Kendall County, Texas, on 30 October 1885. Sometime in 1906, he enlisted in the United States Navy. Eleven years later, on 11 May 1917, Otto entered the Naval Hospital on Mare Island in Vallejo, Solano County, California. According to the patient listings, he served ten years and ten months in the Navy. His rank was GM-1 (Gunners Mate First Class). He is 31 years old and stationed at Puget Sound, Washington. Otto received treatment for tuberculous a chronic pulmonary condition, which he had before entering the Navy. On 5 July 1918, he was discharged and on 12 September 1918, he is living in Denver, Colorado, working as a baggage man at the Union Deport for W. P. R.R. Co. Fortunately, he left the hospital on Mare Island before September 1918. At that time, the hospital began to see patients with the Spanish Flu, and over a few short months, they acquired 1,500 patients, with many of them dying of complications.
While in Denver, he filled out his required World War I draft registration card. Otto is described as a tall, slender man with blue eyes and medium brown hair. He wrote he is unable to serve because he has tuberculosis. He is living with his wife, Edna, at 226 Inca. Otto and Edna Tyndall married in King, Washington, on 6 December 1916. By 1920 they are living in San Antonio in a rented house on Cooper Street, and he is working in a government position as an apprentice electrician. Ten years later, the 1930 census shows they are still living on Cooper Street, and he is working as a janitor for a Baptist Church. They now have two children, Warren M., age nine, and Dorothy L., age six. Edna is forty years old and has tuberculosis. She died in November and the doctor listed on her death certificate, she had the disease for about five or six years. She is buried in Mission Park South in San Antonio.
In 1940 Otto is in the Veterans Administration Hospital in Legion, Texas. Legion is located south of Kerrville, in Kerr County. His children, Warren and Dorothy, are living with Otto’s youngest sister, Ida Wessely Wolfe in San Antonio.
Otto died on 11 August 1962 at the Veterans Administration Center in Temple, Texas. He was 76 years old. He was survived by Warren M. Wessely and Mrs. Dorothy Trimmier of San Antonio; 5 grandchildren; sisters, Mrs. Ida Wolfe and Mrs. Ella Dickinson both of San Antonio; brother Paul Wessely of Los Angeles, California.
He is the nephew of Emma Bauer Schuetz. She died of tuberculosis in 1927 in Boerne. Otto is the grandson of Philipp and Marie Peters Bauer.
Ancestry.com. Registers of Patients at Naval Hospitals, 1812-1934 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.
Otto Wessely Obituary. San Antonio Light (San Antonio, Texas), 13 August 1962.
Registration State: Colorado; Registration County: Denver.
Texas Department of State Health Services; Austin Texas, USA.
Year: 1930; Census Place: San Antonio, Bexar, Texas; Page: 27B; Enumeration District: 0129; FHL microfilm: 2342031
Year: 1940; Census Place: Kerr, Texas; Roll: m-t0627-04086; Page: 2A; Enumeration District: 133-4.
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