Thomas Wetherall (1779-1842) and Rebecca Brooks (1784-1825).
My 5th great-grandparents.
Thomas was baptised on 16 January 1779 at St Nicholas’s Church in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, to parents James Wetherill and Mary Proctor. As was the way then his surname ended up being written in a number of ways over time, most often as Wetherill.
Judging by his father’s success in business as a peruke maker, and his ownership of property, it’s likely that Thomas would’ve had a reasonably comfortable childhood compared to many on the Norfolk coast. When his father’s will was read after his death in 1801 Thomas inherited a share of the property with his siblings and mother.
Thomas married Rebecca Brooks at St Nicholas’s Church on 12 August 1804. She was a Yarmouth native who’d been baptised at the parish church on 14 August 1784 to parents Frederick Brooks and Frances French.
Thomas and Rebecca had at least six children, one of whom was transported as a convict to Australia and another who raised a number of illegitimate children. Most of their baptism records describe him as a watch or clock maker. This matches a document from 1791 showing him apprenticed in Great Yarmouth to Abraham Hunt, a watchmaker and silversmith.
Perhaps it was work that led the couple to leave the coast for the Norfolk county town of Norwich, which is where their children were christened and raised. Rebecca died young, at the age of 40, in January 1825 and was buried at All Saints in Norwich on the 30th. Thomas next crops up in the 1841 census, back in Great Yarmouth and living in Row 29 of the town’s row houses. But this shows that he was living with a boy called Thomas and a woman named Maria, who was said to be 45. Ages were rounded down to the nearest five in this census which suggests she was born in the mid- to early-1790s. I’ve found a record of Thomas marrying spinster Mary Maria Jackson in Gorleston, Suffolk, on 28 March 1829.
Thomas Snr didn’t survive long after the census and died in 1842. He was buried in the town on 20 June.
Thomas and Rebecca’s known children were:
- Rebecca Frances Wetherill (1807-1855), my 4th great-grandmother. Rebecca raised a family but never married.
- Thomas James Wetherill (1810-????), my 4th great-grand uncle. Thomas was born on 24 February 1810 and baptised a day later at St John Timberhill in Norwich, Norfolk. His trail runs cold after this, which suggests he died young. Not only that, his half-brother went by the same name.
- Frederick Elijah Wetherill (1814-1906), my 4th great-grand uncle. He worked as a shoemaker in Great Yarmouth and his offspring experienced some shocking tragedies.
- William Elijah Wetherill (1816-1818), my 4th great-grand uncle. Born on the 8 October 1816, William was baptised at St John Timberhill, Norwich, Norfolk, on the 13th of the month. He died in March 1818 and was buried in the town on the 27th.
- William Brooks Wetherill (1820-1903), my 4th great-grand uncle. William was found guilty of burglary and sentenced to 10 years’ transportation to Australia.
- Harriet Wetherill (1822-1825), my 4th great-grand aunt. She was baptised on 11 August 1822 at St John Timberhill in Norwich. I suspect she was the toddler buried at the church on 11 November 1825, even though her surname was spelled Weatherley. This could be a simple error on the part of the clerk, and there are few if any records that would match our Harriet in future years
Thomas and Maria’s child:
- Thomas James Wetherill (1831-????), my 4th great-grand uncle. Thomas was born in Great Yarmouth on 21 October 1831 and baptised in the town on 29 December 1831. He appeared in the 1841 census but then disappears.
Sources: BMDs and census info at Ancestry.co.uk and Findmypast.co.uk. Records at Norfolk Family History Society. British Newspaper Archive. Victoria State Archives in Australia.