Frederick Elijah Wetherall (1814-1906) and Lucy Sarah Lloyd (1815-1869).
My 4th great-grand uncle and aunt.
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 in the city with his family but followed them when they moved to the coast at Great Yarmouth. He married Lucy Sarah Lloyd on 15 November 1835 at St Nicholas’s in Yarmouth. I’m assuming she was the girl baptised there on 3 June 1815 to sailor William Lloyd and his wife Elizabeth. 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 Lucy’s.
The couple subsequently lived in 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. Lucy 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 on 12 June 1906 in Great Yarmouth General Hospital (Yarmouth Independent 16 June 1906) 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, 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 Norwich Mercury of 19 August 1868 and the Yarmouth Independent of 22 August 1868 reported on his early, tragic death, the result of drowning in the River Yare. The reports stated that his body was discovered near Steam Packet Wharf 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 temperate habits but weak intellect (perhaps what we would call learning disabilities today). 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. Before going missing, he’d complained of his head being bad. 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 local woman Sarah Hannah Morris (officially registered as Hannah Sarah 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 and considered a potential cause. 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. The Yarmouth Mercury of 18 October 1884 reported that the boat was out of Runton in Norfolk and had been hit by a “tremendous sea” which almost made her capsize. All three men on deck at the time were washed overboard but the remaining crew managed to save one. Lewis left behind his wife and several children. By 1901 she and several of her offspring were living in Reynolds Road in West Ham, Essex. Ten 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. They had a large family. Thomas worked as a wine porter and wine cellarman in the area, although the 1911 Census had a Thomas Wetherill from Yarmouth living in Acton, Middlesex, 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. I’ve found no other records that clearly match him.
Sources: Birth, marriage, death, burial, census and other records, including civil registration at the General Register Office, at Ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk and Norfolk Family History Society.
British Newspaper Archive, titles in text.