James Wetherill (1750?-1801).
My 6th great-grandfather.
James Wetherill’s parents were almost certainly Thomas Wetherill and Sarah Sley but the details of his birth and baptism are murky. He was probably born in or around 1750, judging by the fact that he died in Great Yarmouth aged 51 in 1801. A child was baptised in the town on 27 February 1746/7 to Thomas and Sarah but this James was buried at the parish church of St Nicholas in October of the same year.
I think it’s likely that Thomas and Sarah had another son James despite having found no evidence of this, perhaps because the records are damaged or missing. Interestingly, James’ first two children were called Thomas and Sarah and this was a time when people often called their children after their parents. In addition, a James Wetherill was mentioned in the will of Sarah Sley’s father and described as a grandchild.
James married Mary Proctor on 5 June 1776 at St Nicholas’s Church in Yarmouth.
He could be the same James Wetherill mentioned in the Ipswich Journal of 7 December 1775, specifically in a humble petition to King George III signed by a number of men of Great Yarmouth. The petition called for a peaceful solution to the ongoing war between the American colonies and Britain for the benefit of both sides. It was, of course, a petition that the King and his ministers would ignore.
What did James do for a living? The baptism records for his children give no hint but a Norfolk Chronicle report from 5 June 1784 refers to an auction of property around the Market Place in Great Yarmouth, owned by a James Hey, who’d been made bankrupt. The sale included “a shop, two parlours, kitchen, dining-room, seven bed-chambers, and other convenient offices, most advantageously situated for the millinery and drapery business…” as well as a barber’s shop and cellar leased to a James Wetherill that was being used as a public house called The Chequers. James had taken on the lease for 21 years from Christmas 1783 for an annual rent of £8 8s. There’s little or no evidence of another man by this name in the town at this time, so this is probably my ancestor – but he wasn’t a publican.
However, it’s his will, written in 1797, that reveals the story of his life and career, as well as his success in business. James was a peruke maker, a man who made the sort of extravagant wigs we associate with the grand men and women of Georgian England. A record of 23 November 1763 reveals that he was apprenticed to peruke maker Will Nutman in Yarmouth.
It’s possible that James purchased the properties in the Market Place auction mentioned previously because in his will he gives and bequeaths to his wife Mary his “messuages, tenements or dwelling houses, ground and hereditaments” near the Market Place that James as well as his tenants had occupied. Mary was ordered to keep “the same in good and tenantable repair”. This wasn’t the only property James owned because his will also refers to four other tenements or dwelling houses, hereditaments and appurtenances in Great Yarmouth, all of which went to his wife. The script is difficult to read but the suggestion is that some of this property was occupied by a Mr Custins, a baker.
The will made provision for Mary to pay six shillings a week to James’s mother Sarah every Saturday. However, on her death his trustees Samuel King, a baker, and Nathaniel Lewis, a leather cutter, were instructed to dispose of the Market Place properties and divide the proceeds. James’s mother was to get £100, to be paid into Gurney’s Bank, in place of her six shillings a week. The rest of the money was to be divided equally among James’s surviving children or their offspring.
The other properties, occupied by the baker, were to go to the children on Mary’s death or remarriage and to be held by them as tenants in common. James’s goods, chattels and moveables were also to be divided, half to go to his wife and the rest to be divided among his children.
James died in May 1801 and was buried in Great Yarmouth on 4 May. I’ve yet to track down a burial date for Mary.
As it turned out, James’s mother died in 1800, three years after his will was written and the year before his death, and it appears he never got round to amending it.
Mary and James had at least seven children, and several of them migrated to Barking in Essex. See his family page for more details about them.
Sources: BMDs, census and other info at Ancestry.co.uk and Findmypast.co.uk. Records at Norfolk Family History Society. British Newspaper Archive. Will records at Norfolk Archives.