Benjamin Thomas Wetherall (1849-1931) and Sarah Ann Elizabeth Green (1849-1938).
My 2nd great-grandparents.
Benjamin Thomas Wetherall was born illegitimately on 1 May 1849 in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, but he wasn’t baptised until 23 April 1852 in the town’s St Nicholas’ Church. His mother was Mary Wetherall, who also appears to have been illegitimate.
Just two years later the 1851 Census showed a collection of Wetheralls living at 7 Jays Buildings in Yarmouth, but the enumerator made an error transcribing the entries and caused me no end of confusion when I first started researching the family. For he made Benjamin and his sister Rebecca the children of their grandmother Rebecca Snr instead of as Mary Ann’s offspring. By the age of 12 Benjamin was living with his older sister Rebecca at Denes Buildings in Yarmouth, along with his mum Mary and Essex-born James Harvey, a ship chandler’s labourer. James, who was 23 years older than Mary, married her in 1860. Benjamin was still living with them in 1871, by which time he was employed as a ship’s carpenter.
On 30 August 1871, he married Sarah Ann Elizabeth Green at the parish church of St Nicholas in Great Yarmouth. Benjamin was described as a shipwright and the couple were living in Ordnance Road. The witnesses were William Robert Green and Louisa Abel. Sarah was born in the Warwickshire city of Birmingham – at 2 Court House, Bartholomew Row – on 17 May 1849 and baptised there in St Martin’s Church on 4 June that year. Her parents were mariner, fish curer and fishmonger William Mark Green and Elizabeth Maria Symonds, who both came from Great Yarmouth in Norfolk but moved around for work. The 1851 Census, for example, showed the family living at 4 Ann Street, Clerkenwell, London. Sarah was visiting widow Harriet Leach and her daughter in Bermondsey Place West, Great Yarmouth, at the time of the 1861 Census. Although the enumerator listed her as being from the town, I suspect this was an error. The 1871 Census showed her a few months before her wedding living in Ordnance Road, Great Yarmouth, with her mother Elizabeth, her step-father Robert Abel and her step-brothers and sisters. She was working as a beatster, who were more often than not women who spent their working days mending the nets used by local fishermen.
Benjamin and Sarah would go on to have seven children but one of them, a boy called Arthur, was born not in Great Yarmouth but in Walker, Northumberland, which suggests that Benjamin was travelling with his job. Walker was a centre of shipbuilding on the River Tyne, just to the west of Newcastle.
The couple were back in Ordnance Road, Great Yarmouth, by the 1881 Census, when Benjamin was again listed as a ship’s carpenter, but the 1891 Census showed them at 60 Admiralty Road. Ten years later he was with Sarah and his son Benjamin in the parish of St Mary the Virgin in Greenhithe, Kent. The reason for the move, which has come down through the descendants of Benjamin’s daughter Emmeline, is that he had been recruited by Frederick Everard of shipbuilders F T Everard & Sons to play a key role in the build of two Thames sailing barges, one of which is still operating today.
Benjamin and Everard’s paths crossed when the latter sent his two sons, Frederick William and William Joseph, to train at the shipyard of Fellows in Great Yarmouth. Once they’d completed their education their father set them to work in the yard at Greenhithe building a Thames barge each – William the Cambria and Frederick the Hibernia. Benjamin, an experienced shipwright, was brought in by Frederick Snr to oversee the work. Family lore suggests that Frederick was fond of Benjamin and that they and their wives would often have tea together.
Both barges didn’t just earn their keep ferrying goods up and down the Thames, the English coast and to the near continent, for they also took part in races throughout their lives. Cambria was a bit faster than Hibernia and was second in the coasting class in the Thames and Medway races after launching in 1906.
The Cambria was the last Thames barge to operate solely under sail and delivered its final load in 1970. She was then put on display but age withered her and she was in a poor state by the time the Cambria Trust, which bought her for £1 in 1996, began restoration work in 2007. Relaunched in 2011, still under the power of sail, she is used today for training and pleasure trips and still competes in races. The Hibernia was less successful, being wrecked off the Norfolk coast in 1937. The Cromer lifeboat rescued all three crew. Benjamin’s grandson Leslie Woods – Emmeline’s son – recalled that pictures of the two boats hung on the wall at Benjamin’s home. In a video recorded before his death he remembered Benjamin as a dear old chap. When new boats were being launched from the yards in Yarmouth, Leslie remembers that Benjamin would tell the children so they could go and watch the event. He said that his grandfather would be under the boat, knocking the wood blocks away to allow the vessel to slide down the slipway.
The sailing barge job completed in Greenhithe, the Wetheralls returned to Great Yarmouth. The 1911 Census recorded Benjamin and Sarah living in Lichfield Road with Elizabeth Marie Abel, Sarah’s widowed mother. Ten years later the Census noted that Benjamin was working for Crabtrees, a venerable shipbuilders in the area.
Benjamin died aged 82 from heart disease and heart failure at 115 Lichfield Road, Yarmouth, on 18 September 1931 and was buried in the town on 22nd of the month. His daughter Emmeline was present at his death. The certificate described him as a former journeyman shipwright, a description that suggests he was fully qualified, had served an apprenticeship and was usually employed for and paid by the day.
Sarah’s grandson Leslie Woods recalled her as being the type of person who kept all of them in order when they were children, perhaps more of a disciplinarian than her more sweet-natured husband. He added that in her later years she suffered with her health. She lived with them for a while so that her daughter Emmeline could care for her, and they also lived with her when she wasn’t well. A 1937 electoral roll showed her living with her daughter Gertrude in Harrow, North London.
Sarah died on 16 May 1938 at 56 High Cliff Drive, Leigh-on-Sea, and the death certificate listed the cause of death as cerebral thrombosis, myocardial degeneration and senility, which essentially means a stroke and heart disease. Sarah was buried back in her home town of Great Yarmouth on 19 May.
Surviving photos of Benjamin show him as a well-dressed man with a fob watch in his waistcoat. One of his great-granddaughters, through his daughter Emmeline, still owns it to this day.
The couple had seven children:
- Emmeline Louisa Wetherall (1872-1932), my 2nd great aunt. Emmeline married miller Albert Woods, who died after an horrific accident at work, and had three children.
- Arthur Albert William Wetherall (1874-1876), my 2nd great uncle. Born and baptised in Walker, Northumberland in 1874, Arthur died a toddler back in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, in January 1876. He was buried in the town on the 28th of the month but I don’t have a cause of death for him. The fact that Arthur was born in Walker – a village on the River Tyne west of Newcastle – suggests that Benjamin went north with his job as a shipwright but I have no idea how long he stayed there. Walker was part of an industrial powerhouse and one of its biggest success stories was the Swan Hunter yard.
- Elizabeth Mary Ann Wetherall (1876-1952), my 2nd great aunt. My great-grandmother married into the Stolliday family and moved to south London with her family.
- Gertrude Wetherall (1877-1964), my 2nd great aunt. Gertrude married George Albert Harvey, who served in the First World War but killed himself almost 20 years later. They had two sons.
- Maud Jane Wetherall (1881-1958), my 2nd great aunt. Maud raised a family in Middlesex.
- Helen Daisy Wetherall (1885-????), my 2nd great aunt. Helen was born in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, but married Frederick Davis in South Africa.
- Benjamin Walter Wetherall (1887-1917), my 2nd great uncle. Born in 1887 in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, Benjamin grew up in the town and in Kent when his father moved there for work. He married Esther Mabel Brazell in Great Yarmouth in 1910 and together they lived at 75 Wolseley Road and then 45 Lichfield Road in the town. Esther was born locally in 1885, the daughter of a blacksmith. Benjamin followed his father and became a shipwright, but he died young in October 1917 while living in Lichfield Road in Yarmouth. In a video interview our relative Leslie Woods says that Benjamin had been working in the dockyards at Devonport in Plymouth but returned home when he needed an operation on a complaint that was related either to his ear or his throat. Apparently, Benjamin’s mother was against him having the operation in hospital and insisted he have it at home but the doctor who carried out the procedure didn’t do it properly and Benjamin died a few days later from complications, at the home of his father-in-law William Brazell, 111 Lichfield Road. Benjamin’s funeral took place on 20 October 1917. Esther lived on for many years, recorded in the 1939 Register as living in 112 Lichfield Road as a drapers’ manageress along with her widowed mother Martha. She died on 14 April 1949 and was buried in Yarmouth on the 16th, leaving effects worth about £256. Benjamin and Esther had one known child, Donald Wetherall (1911-1983), a window-dresser and draper at the time of the 1939 Register. He’s likely the man whose death was registered in Palma, Majorca in 1983.
Sources: All data has been gathered from family memories, Ancestry.co.uk, FindMyPast.co.uk, the British Newspaper Archive and Norfolk Family History Society. Cambria Trust website.