Frederick Elijah Wetherall (1814-1906).
My 4th great-grand uncle.
Frederick was born on 30 July 1814 and baptised at St John Timberhill, Norwich, Norfolk, a day later – his parents were Thomas Wetherill and Rebecca Brooks.
He grew up mainly in the city with his family but followed them when they moved to the coast at Great Yarmouth. He married Sarah Lucy Lloyd on 15 November 1835 at St Nicholas’s in Yarmouth. I’m assuming she was the girl baptised Lucy Sarah Lloyd there on 3 June 1815 to sailor William Lloyd and his wife Elizabeth. The switch of first names is confusing but census records always put her place of birth as Great Yarmouth, thus ruling out the woman I first thought was Frederick’s wife – Sarah Lucy Lloyd of Norwich born in 1816. It wasn’t and isn’t unusual for people to use middle names as their first and while errors were made in noting birth towns in census returns, Norwich never appeared as Sarah’s.
The couple subsequently lived in the Yarmouth’s famous rows – 51 in the 1841 census and in subsequent returns 109 and 10. There Frederick made his living as a shoemaker and together they raised a family. Sarah died in June 1869 and was buried in Great Yarmouth on the 23rd of the month, less than a year after the couple had suffered the loss of their eldest son in the River Yare (see below).
For a time Frederick continued to live in the rows but he later moved in with his daughter Sophia and her family, first in Tyrolean Square (1881) and latterly in Winifred Road (1891 and 1901 censuses). Frederick died in his 90s in June 1906 in Great Yarmouth General Hospital and was buried in the Yarmouth New Cemetery on the 16th.
The couple had a number of children:
- Elizabeth Ann Wetherall (1836-????). Elizabeth was baptised on 3 October 1836 in Great Yarmouth and can be traced until the 1871 census, when she was a charwoman or cleaner, unmarried and living in Row 12 in Great Yarmouth. She then disappears from the records.
- Frederick Wetherall (1838-1868). Frederick Jnr was baptised on 4 July 1838 in St Nicholas’s Church, Great Yarmouth, and was still living at home with his parents at the 1861 census, which recorded him working as a labourer. The Yarmouth Independent of 22 August 1868 reported on his early, tragic death, the result of drowning in the River Yare. The paper reported that his body was discovered several days after he had gone missing, having failed to return to the home that by then he shared with a sister at Row 10. Described as an ostler for the Angel Hotel, Frederick was said to be of weak intellect (perhaps what we would call learning disabilities today) and of mild temperament. It was reported that he had recently appeared as a prosecution witness in a court case and feared that the defendant would now cause him harm. The jury, who heard that Frederick’s head had been cut and bruised, returned a verdict after a post mortem had been carried out that he’d been ‘found drowned’.
- Isabella Wetherall (1840-1852) was baptised and buried in Great Yarmouth.
- James Morgan Wetherall (1843-1881). Born in Great Yarmouth, James worked as a servant at the Angel Hotel in Great Yarmouth before marrying Sarah Hannah Morris in the town in 1874. They were living in Cobholm Island, Great Yarmouth, at the 1881 census, when James was listed as the landlord of the Cobholm Tavern beerhouse on Mill Road. However, he died just months later. Sarah took over the pub but died horrifically there in 1884, leaving behind two daughters. The Norfolk News of 9 August 1884 reported on the inquest, which heard that Sarah had woken at night on fire. Her young daughter raised the alarm and a servant and a lodger came to her aid and put the fire out, but Sophia had suffered severe burns and later died. A candle was found close to the bed. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death.
- Ellen Hannah Wetherall (1845-1914). Ellen – who often was known as Hannah – was born in Great Yarmouth and married Lewis Rogers or Rodgers in the town in 1868. He was a fisherman and was drowned when washed overboard, along with one of his colleagues, while working as crew of the Liberty on 11 October 1884. He left behind his wife and several children. By 1901 she and several of her offspring were living in Reynolds Road in West Ham, east London, and 10 years later she was still in the area living in Park Grove although by then alone. I suspect, but cannot confirm, that she was the Ellen Rogers who was buried back in Great Yarmouth in February 1914.
- Sophia Wetherall (1848-1912). Born in Great Yarmouth, Sophia married sailor James Adams in 1869. They raised a family and he later became a labourer in an iron works, a boiler maker’s mate and a coal hawker. For many years they lived on the borders of Great Yarmouth and Gorleston with her father. She died there in 1912. James lived until 1927.
- Thomas William Wetherall (1855-????). Thomas was born in Great Yarmouth and married Sarah Ann Gardner locally in 1873. He worked as a wine porter and wine cellarman in the area, although the 1911 census has a Thomas William from Yarmouth living in Acton, west London, working in a motor garage. His wife had died in 1904 and it looks like he’d moved there to live close to two of his daughters, who’d found work in the district as domestic servants. He could be the man who died in the Wandsworth area in 1936, although there was another by this name in that area at the 1911 census.
Sources: BMDs and census info at Ancestry.co.uk and Findmypast.co.uk. Records at Norfolk Family History Society. British Newspaper Archive.