William Bascom Wetherall, 1911-2013 William B. "Bill" Wetherall, veteran Nevada City attorney, died on June 19, 2013 in Nevada City [California] at the age of 102. He was born on March 25, 1911 in Ames, Iowa. After completion of public school education in Iowa, he attended the University of Idaho, where he received his law degree in 1937. Upon admission to the Idaho Bar in 1937, Bill was appointed law clerk to Judge William Healy of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth District in San Francisco. He was admitted to the California Bar in 1939, served as Regional Litigation Attorney for the Office of Price Administration during the early 1940s, and engaged in private practice in the city for a number of years. On June 1, 1938 Bill married Orene Hardman of Peck, Idaho, his college sweetheart. In 1955, he moved with his wife and three children to Grass Valley, and practiced law out of offices in Nevada City until 2003 then out of his home for several years. He served as City Attorney for Nevada City from 1959 to 1979, and was a director of the Nevada County Fair Board from 1962 to 1974. He was also a director of Music in the Mountains during its formative years. Bill was preceded in death by his wife Orene on August 9, 2003, and by a grandson, Peter Owen Wetherall Vodonick (Zweig) on October 9, 2004. He is survived by three children, son William Owen Wetherall of Japan, son and daughter-in-law Jerry Alan Wetherall and Purita Obispo of Honolulu, and daughter Mary Ellen (Mellon) Zweig of Grass Valley; three grandchildren and a granddaughter-in-law, Gurditta Singh Khalsa (Zweig) and Alessandra of Santa Fe, and Saori Orene Wetherall Sugiyama and Tsuyoshi Owen Wetherall Sugiyama of Japan; two great-grandchildren, Siri Parmeshar Singh Khalsa and Amrita Elizabeth Khalsa of Santa Fe; and an "adopted" daughter, Clara Yang, and her sons Allan and Sean, of Placerville. |
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"In every rose I see her radiant face" Louida Orene Wetherall, 1913-2003 Louida Orene Wetherall died Saturady, August 9, [2003] in her Grass Valley [California] home. She was 89. Orene was born November 21, 1913, on a homesteaded farm on the Camas Prairie in northern Idaho to Owen and Ullie Hardman. She attended the University of Idaho, where she met her husband, Bill, and in later years attended San Francisco State College. She married William B. "Bill" Wetherall on June 1, 1938, in San Francisco. They moved their family to Grass Valley in 1955. She taught school in Idaho for three years, two of them in a one-room country schoolhouse. She worked in the office at Nevada Union High School for 13 years and did home teaching for several years. She was a lifetime member of the PTA and in her early years in Grass Valley was president of the Grass Valley Girl Scout Council and the Community Concert Association. She was an active member of the Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital Auxiliary, the Golden Empire Convalescent Hospital Auxiliary, Music in the Mountains, the Grass Valley Ladies Relief Society and the American Association of University Women. She enjoyed books, music, crossword puzzles and her flower garden. Orene is survived by her husband, Bill Wetherall; son William O. Wetherall of Japan; son and daughter-in-law Jerry Alan Wetherall and Purita Obispo of Honolulu, Hawaii; daughter Mary Ellen "Mellon" Zweig of Grass Valley and "adopted" daughter Clara Yang of Sacramento; grand-children Gurditta Singh Khalsa and his wife, Himat Kaur, Peter Owen Vodonick, Saori Orene Wetherall and Tsuyoshi Owen Wetherall; and one great-grandchild, Siri Parmeshar Singh Khalsa. She was preceded in death by her parents and a sister, Ullie Emerson. Memorial services will be held 10 a.m. Thursday, August 21, at the Nevada City Chapel of Hooper and Weaver Mortuary. Memorial contributions may be made to Hospice of the Foothills, Music in the Mountains or a charity of the donor's choice. Bill's obituary is a slightly revised update of one he himself wrote in the late 1990s when, after surviving a colostomy, he began planning his own estate. A slightly different version appeared in the print and on-line editions of The Union on Friday, 28 June 2013. The photograph of Bill standing at the start of the Orene Wetherall Trail, where it branches off the Cascade Canal Trail on Banner Mountain east of Nevada City, was taken by Gregg Schiffner during an outing with family and friends in March 2012. The portrait of Bill was taken at the time of his marriage to Orene in 1938. Orene's obituary is a slightly edited version of the copy published in the print and on-line editions of The Union on Tuesday, 19 August 2003. The photograph of Orene with Bill was taken by this writer on the trail along the South Fork of the Yuba River upstream from Bridgeport during a family outing on 28 March 1999. The portrait of Orene was taken at the time of her marriage to Bill in 1938.
MemorializationBoth Bill and Orene were cremated according to their own arrangements. Their ashes were privately kept until 2015, when they were scattered around a memorial bench honoring Bill on a trail built in memory of Orene. Part of their daughter Mary Ellen (Wetherall) Zweig's ashes, and part of their grandson Peter Owen Wetherall Vodonick's ashes, were similar scattered on the trail in 2017. Orene WetherallOrene was cremated in accordance with arrangements she and Bill had made before her death. An urn containing her ashes, draped with a furoshiki, was placed beside her wedding portrait and a teacher's hand bell on a table by the piano, where the living room turns into the dining room. Her reading glasses and several things she liked -- a favorite novel, a fountain pen she had used since college, a Snickers bar -- were later placed on the shrine. The potted African violets, which were Orene's favorite flowers, were later replaced by a vase that Bill kept full of flowers he picked in the garden or during his walks in the woods. A memorial service was held for Orene Wetherall on 21 August 2003 at the Nevada City Chapel of Hooper and Weaver Mortuary in Nevada City. Her ashes were displayed on an altar at the memorial hall, like that at her home, but with a candle. After the service, Orene's ashes were returned to the altar by the piano at her home. Bill kept a vase he chose from their collection of glass art, full of flowers he picked from the backyard or nearby woods. As a tribute to Orene, Bill made a substantial contribution to the Nevada County Land Trust (now Bear Yuba Land Trust), under an arrangement in which the Land Trust built a memorial trail it signed Orene Wetherall Trail. The trail was completed and formally dedicated in 2010 (see below). Bill took Orene's ashes with him when he moved, in early 2012, to the home of his caregivers, Candance Hansen and Jerry Hodkins, in Nevada City. After he died in 2013, his and Orene's ashes were kept by their daughter Mary Ellen at her home in Grass Valley. Bill WetherallAfter his death in 2013, Bill was cremated, and in accordance with his wishes, no memorial service of any kind was conducted for him. He considered the birthday dinner held in 2011 in honor of his 100th birthday as a sufficient celebration of his life. Over 100 people -- a few relatives and many friends -- attended the dinner. In early 2013, while Bill was still alive, Gregg Schiffner, who had emceed the birthday event, produced a DVD celebrating Bill's 102 years of life. After Bill died, the Yuba Bear Land Trust (formerly Nevada County Land trust), in recognition of Bill's long support of Land Trust activities, placed a bench at the head of the loop part of the Orene Wetherall Trail, with a plaque chosen and worded by the Wetherall children. The plaque, which bears both Bill's and Orene's names, was attached to the bench in the presence of family members on 17 October 2015. The following day they scattered Bill's and Orene's ashes around the bench after walking the trail with their ashes in back packs. On 18 October 2017, a few months after Mary Ellen died, parts of her ashes, and part's of her son Peter's ashes, were also scattered around the bench. See Endings on the Wetherall-Hardman family page for fuller details and more photographs. |
Orene Wetherall TrailThe photograph in Bill's obituary, showing him standing alone by the sign marking the start of the Orene Wetherall Trail, was taken in March 2012 during an outing with family and friends, including Gregg Schiffner, who remembers the occasion like this. Public dedicationBill established the Orene Wetherall Memorial Endowment with the Nevada County Land Trust endowment (now Bear Yuba Land Trust) on 17 November 2003. Orene would have been 90 years old on 21 November. He presented a contribution of $30,000 in person at the NCLT office with a letter that, in legal parlance, he called an "instrument of gift". Two acknowledgement letters are also dated 17 November. A third acknowledgement letter dated 1 December, from NCLT's treasurer, asks permission to use his letter as a model for others who wish to make such bequests. The endowment's establishment was reported on the front page of the February 2004 issue of NCLT's Land News bulletin (Volume 12, Issue 1). Orene's children contributed to the endowment fund in the spring of 2004, in the same spirit in which the endowment was created by their father -- namely, that NCLT "shall have broad authority in management the endowment, but that income generated from investments "shall be used [primarily] for the acquisition, construction or maintenance of trails" -- provided that NCLT will have broad authority to use income for other land trust purposes so long as trail needs are given priority. At some point, NCLT decided to build a trail to be called the "Orene Wetherall Loop Trail" in the Woodpecker Preserve area along the Cascade Canal Trail on Banner Mountain. Accordingly, the Orene Wetherall Loop Trail was officially opened and dedicated on 5 June 2010, about two months after Bill turned 99, and a few days before what would have been his and Orene's 71st wedding anniversary. The dedication was reported in the Summer 2010 issue of Land News (page 6) and also in an NCLT-authored article posted on YubaNet on 18 June 2010. The Land News report notes that "The trail is currently an in-and-out trail, meaning when you reach the end you must retrace your steps back to the trailhead. The next phase of trail construction includes a loop through other areas of the Preserve." The YubaNet article lists "Orene Wetherall Loop Trail, Phase 2 at Woodpecker Preserve, Nevada City" as one of five trails then under construction. Because the trail was not yet a "loop" the provisional paper sign, and the metal sign that later replaced it, read "Orene Wetherall Trail" and informed hikers it was 0.6 miles to the end of the trail, beyond which was private property, on which they were not to tresspass. As such it was an "out and back" trail, and so hikers were asked to return on the same trail. The webpage for the trail on Bear Yuba Land Trust's website as of the time Bill passed away stated that "A full loop trail is scheduled to be opened in 2012." To the day he passed away, Bill would wonder when "Phase 2" would be completed so that the "out and back" signage could be changed to show that trail bearing Orene's name was now a loop as originally planned. He died on 19 June 2013 hearing rumors that "They were still working on it." The trail is fully described and photographed on the website of the Bear Yuba Land Trust (formerly Nevada County Land Trust). Nevada County Land Trust publicized the dedication of the trail in an article posted on YubaNet on 18 June 2010. The text of the article is reproduced below in a slightly different format. Bill's citation from the essay on "Giving" in The Prophet (1923) by Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) has been blocked and highlighted. The YubaNet article shows a single photograph of Bill standing while addressing those present at the dedication ceremony. Here, the original photograph has here been replaced by three others showing Bill with his family and closest neighbors and friends (including the photographer).
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Memorial bench on Orene Wetherall Trail
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The birth of "Bug"Orene disliked her first name, Louida, though at times she used "L. Orene Wetherall" on stationery. Friends and neighbors generally called her Orene. To her closest kinfolk and most intimate (especially childhood) friends, she was "Bug" or even "Buggins" (as she signed many of her early letters to Bill when they were courting). At some point in her life, she compared herself -- or someone compared her to -- a cute "lady bug", which became her logo. She acquired all manner of accessories and knickknacks -- from pins and buttons to scarves, stationery, and refrigerator magnets -- with red-and-black "lady bug" motiffs. And of course her very first car would be a Volkswagen "Bug". She was "Bug" from the time she began to crawl as a baby, as the following letter from her father, Owen Hardmen, dramatizes. The letter is dated 21 November 1944, her 31st birthday. Her third child was due in a couple of months, and Owen hoped it would be a girl like her. The envelope is addressed in pencil to "Mrs Wm Wetherall / 1922-24 Ave / San Francisco 16 / Calif." from "Box 43 / Peck / Id". It is franked "PECK / NOV / 21 / 230 PM / 1944 / IDAHO" but the stamp has been removed. The standard 6-7/16 x 3-5/8 inch envelope is upside down so the flap on the back is on the bottom. The letter, too, is written in pencil, on both sides of a single sheet of standard 8-1/2 x 11 inch paper. The writing in all respects -- the penmanship, the spelling, the grammar, the puncutation -- is that of a typical man of Owen's generation who barely learned to read and write, as work on the farm was more important than schooling. His words prove why one should never judge a man's character by his literacy.
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Bug's story of her own birthOrene Wetherall was a voracious reader of mostly fiction. For a while she was active in a local Grass Valley reading club, but reading for her was mostly a private journey into the worlds of the stories. Along with her love of reading was a love of crossword puzzles. She was always working one in the crossword magazines she kept in the kitchen but sometimes left in the living room. She was also a prolific letter writer as her children and other correspondents will testify. Her letters betray a sense of style that would have served her well had she ever herself written a novel or family history. Practically all of her letters to me were hand written, but some were typed on a brown electric IBM Selectronic that had once been used in my father's law office but then was installed in "the boys room" -- the back bedroom my brother and I had shared when growing up in Grass Valley. Our parents converted the room into a "den" cum "study", and when my dad closed his office in Nevada City, he moved his practice into the back room. Among my mother's detritus was a single sheet of ruled yellow legal paper on which, with a blue ballpoint pen, she had written her own version of her birth. The manuscript, which spills over to the back of the page, is undated, but I suspect she wrote it in the 1990s, perhaps around the time she answered my endless questions about the family photographs as I reorganized them. She was always ready to talk about her side of the family history, a favorite topic when getting together with her sister, mother, aunts and uncles, and cousins. What I immediately noticed about the manuscript is the manner in which she edited it, seemingly on the fly, while writing the story, which reads like this.
The 1st sentence of the 3rd paragraph ends without a period, as though something had distracted my mother in the middle of the start of what might have been an full-length autobiography. She thought enough to fold the sheet in half and file it away, however, as though she might finish the story someday. But as Robert Frost said, "way leads onto way" -- and she never came back to it. In just these few sentences, my mother vividly captured the personality of her parents -- who I knew -- and her maternal grandmother, about which Ullie and her siblings -- most of whom I knew, a few fairly well -- talked so much about whenever they got together. Some of their conversations in the 1970s I was able to record on cassette tapes (see Audio / video on "Wetherall family history" for details). The many edits my mother made, on the fly it seems, are purely stylistic -- tightening up phrases, sharpening the diction -- to create a simpler, faster, more powerful, literary narrative. She was, in every sense of the word, a wordsmith. |
"William""William" had been the name of the first-born son in the William B. Wetherall line of Wetheralls for at least 5 generations, beginning with no later than his paternal great-grandfather William Edwin Wetherall (1834-1914). WBW's first son, breaking tradition, named his son Tsuyoshi Owen Wetherall, no offense to the clan's tutelary gods intended. William Edwin Wetherall (1834-1914) The name "William" is one of the most common names in Europe, with variations in practically all European languages. Since the 1970s, "William Wetherall" has also been a Japanese name, written ウェザロール ウィリアム and pronounced "Uezarooru Uiriamu" in that language, in which the family name comes first. |
"Bascom"Orene called her husband "Bill" as did most of his friends and neighbors. But some letters to him at the time they were courting begin "Dear Biddy". His mother called him "Willie" in her early writing about him and he recalls her calling him this. He was also called "Billy" in his childhood. Bill named his first son William but called him Billy -- though sometimes "Willy" or "Billy Boy" and even "Will". Some relatives referred to him as "Big Bill" and now and then a neighbor or friend would call him "Bill Sr." to distinguish him from "Little Bill" or "Bill Jr." -- though their middle names were different. Orene, in Christmas letters, also sometimes differentiated her husband and son as "Bill, Sr." and "Bill, Jr." -- simply to keep things simple -- though in the family she spoke of "Bill" or "Daddy" and "Billy". Bill was "W.B. Wetherall" on the sign over the porch of his Grass Valley home, and "W.B.W." on monogrammed handerchiefs. Melo Pello, one of William B. Wetherall's best friends, however, liked to call him "Bascom". Melo, the first to speak from the floor at his 100th birthday party in 2011, recalled the day he first met Bill when visiting his Broad Street office during the early years of his Nevada City practice. Studying the framed law license on the wall, Melo was struck by the middle name. "Bascom. With a name like that, he had to be an honest guy." William "Bascom" Wetherall was actually born William "Bascum" Wetherall -- not that the spelling would have altered Melo's assessment of his character. "What's in a spelling?" the Bard might ask."
BascumHow "Bascum" became "Bascom" remains a mystery. Bill might say "A funny thing happened to me on the way to the court house" -- paraphrasing Adlai Stevenson, his favorite politican before Barack Obama. Stevenson was twice on his way to the White House in the 1950s, but unlike Obama, he didn't make it. "William Bascom Wetherall" -- not "Bascum" -- was summoned to the Idaho Supreme Court in 1937 to take the oath for admission to the Idaho Bar. WBW was unable to explain why the "u" became an "o" -- except to say that that's how he had come to spell it long before he saw documents showing that it was supposed to be "Bascum". By then it no longer mattered. Spelling errors or "variations" are commonly found on public documents simply because someone -- at times a family member, at times a teacher or registrar or clerk or scribe or typist -- makes a mistake. The customary "Bascom" is no less legal than the original "Bascum". Any authority comparing documents showing the particulars of the backgrounds of the "two" William B. Wetheralls, with seemingly different middle names, would see that they were one and the same person. Bill's birth certificate clearly shows "William Bascum Wetherall". And his parents, on cards printed by his father, a printer by trade, announced his birth as "William Bascum Wetherall".
"Bascum" namesakeThere is little doubt that "Bascum" was WBW's intended middle name. First name from paternal grandfather"William" had been the first name of WBW's father William Riley Wetherall (1890-1936), paternal grandfather William Franklin Wetherall (1858-1929), and paternal-paternal great-grandfather William Edwin Wetherall (1834-1914), and he would name his own first son William Owen Wetherall (b1941). This appears to have been the naming tradition in WBW's Wetherall line, though all known Williams in the clan have had different middle names. Middle name from maternal grandfather"Bascum" was the middle name, but the preferred social name, of WBW's maternal grandfather, Newton Bascum Baldwin (1862-1919). Similarly, WBW's first son's middle name -- "Owen" -- was the name by which his maternal grandfather, Owen Monroe Hardman (1890-1949), was most commonly known. Baldwin family tombstonesThe large "Baldwin" tombstone standing in the center of the Baldwin family plot Woodlawn Cemetery in Saint Maries, Idaho, shows "N. Bascum Baldwin / Dec. 24, 1862 / Mar. 22, 1919" above "M. Ellen Baldwin / 1863-1943". The names are those of WBW's maternal grandparents, Newton Bascum Baldwin and Martha Ellen (Steele) Baldwin. They, like Orene, perferred their middle names. The headstone in the left foreground reads "Ida Baldwin / Wetherall / 1890-1823" -- WBW's mother, who died in Orofino, Idaho. VariationsVariations of "Bascom" and "Bascum" include Bascombe, Bascome, Baskomb, and Boscomb. One enthusiasitc Internet peddler of geneological misinformation identifies the N. B. Baldwin in WEW's family as "Newton Bascomb Baldwin". |
"Wether" and "all""Wetherall" is not a common name but neither is it especially rare. Like most names, it has many variations owing to differences over the centuries in dialects and literacy. There are numerous variations -- virtually all combinations and permutations of "Wether-" and "Weather-" and "Wither-" with "-al / all" or "-el / -ell" or "-il / -ill". Wetherald, Weatherald, Wetherilt, Wetherett, Wederell, Wedderall, and many others are also part of this fairly diverse group of related surnames. Wetherall has also been used as a middle name but apparently not as a forename. Weathering the misspellingsEveryone in the William B. Wetherall family is used to people hearing or remembering the name as "Weatherall" or "Weatheral". It's understandable, and generally forgivable, but not always tolerable. We've had to be vigilant when it comes to how people write our names in official records and newspaper articles. The front and back pages of the Saturday, 5 December 2009 edition of The Union -- a local paper "Founded in 1864 to Preserve the Union . . . One and Unseparable" -- featured a long profile of Bill Wetherall under the banner -- "Weathering it all / Attorney still practicing law at 98". You might think the writer was just having fun. Yes and no. The name is correctly "Wetherall" in the caption, but "Weatherall" creeps into the body of the article three times, surrounded by "Wetherall" in adjacent paragraphs. You don't know whether to sigh or cry. This writer can testify to the fact that anyone named "William Wetherall" sooner or later gets called "All-weather Willy" -- among other things. You get used to it. wether"Wether" in "Wetherall" definitely derives from "wether" -- "a castrated male sheep" most dictionaries say, though "male" seems redundant. A "wether" is thus the commonest of male sheep, deemed unfit for use as a breeding ram -- suitable only for mountain oysters, wool, and mutton, pretty much in this order. Fortunately, humans don't treat other humans this way. Usually. It seems to depend on which humans are regarded as human. The etymology gets more complicated but interesting. wether Old English weðer "ram," from Proto-Germanic *wethruz (cf. Old Saxon wethar, Old Norse veðr, Old High German widar, German Widder, Gothic wiþrus "lamb"), literally "yearling," from PIE root *wet- "year" (cf. Sanskrit vatsah "calf," Greek etalon "yearling," Latin vitulus "calf," literally "yearling"). Male sheep, especially a castrated one. (etymonline.com) bellwetherA "bellwether" is a wether, usually with a bell, that leads the flock. Humans also use the word as a metaphor for a leader of a sheeplike crowd. As in "Follow the wether." Or perhaps "Take me to your wether." It's also used as a pronoun for something that suggests a trend or development, a new direction or style. "Nevada City was the bellwether of Mother Lode preservation." bellwether mid-14c. (late 13c. in Anglo-Latin; late 12c. as a surname), from bell (n.) + wether; the lead sheep (on whose neck a bell was hung) of a domesticated flock. Figurative sense of "chief, leader" is from mid-14c. (etymonline.com) Wethersfield"Wether" is combined with other words like "field" as in "Wethersfield", the name of Connecticut's oldest town, founded in 1634. Some colonial records reportedly show the town's name spelled as "Weathersfield", which testifies to the sort of variations that inevitable arise when writing words. "Wethersfield" and "Weathersfield" are also surnames. And "-field" is also "-feld" hence "Wethersfeld" et cetera. Both "wether" and "-all" have Indo-European roots. Names beginning with "Wether-" or "Wethe-" or just "Weth-" seem endless. Some short (somewhat overlapping) lists include -- Wethampsted, Wethamsted, Wethamstede, Wethar, Wetharhead, Wethby, Wethear, Wethebroke, Wetheby, Wetheer, Wetheharm, Wethell, Wethemed, Wethenhale, Wether, Wetheral, Wetherald, Wetheralk, Wetherall, Wetherbee, Wetherberg, Wetherbey, Wetherbi, Wetherborne, Wetherbourne, Wetherbrooke, Wetherburn, Wetherburne, Wetherby, Wetherbye, Wethercock, Wethercote, Wetherden, Wetherdon, Wetherdwick, Wethere, Wethered, Wethereffelde, Wetherehl, Wetherel, Wethereld, Wetherell, Wetherelt, Wetheresden, Wetheresenecke, Wetheresfeld, Wetheret, Wetherett, Wetherfield, Wethergrave, Wethergrove, Wetherhagg, Wetherhall, Wetherhard, Wetherhead, Wetherheade, Wetherhed, Wetherhelt, Wetherherd, Wetherherde, Wetherhide, Wetherhill, Wetheril, Wetherill, Wetherilt, Wetheringsete, Wetherington, Wetheris, Wetherisfeld, Wetheritt, Wetherley, Wetherley-mein, Wetherly, Wetherlye, Wetherman, Wethermann, Wethernghey, Wetherop, Wetherow, Wetherrill, Wethers, Wethersby, Wetherseed, Wethersell, Wethersett, Wethersly, Wetherson, Wetherspon, Wetherspone, Wetherspoon, Wetherston, Wetherstone, Wetherton, Wetherwick, Wetherwll, Wetheryd, Wetheryngsete, Wetheryngton, Wetherys, Wethey, Wethfoten, Wethiel, Wethindon, Wethington, Wethir, Wethy -allSince the early 1960s this writer (WOW) thought that "-all" reflected "stall" as in "sheepshed". He was under this impression when, in the late 1960s, he coined his Japanese handle -- "Yosha" -- a Sino-Japanese version of the Japanese word "hitsujigoya" meaning "sheepshed". "Yosha" thus became, and remains, his "house name" -- his "shop name" -- the name of his library. He's told hundreds of people its meaning -- and explained that it's merely a translation of his original English family name -- by way of easing their minds that he's not raising sheep in his yard and is not a missionary. Everyone laughs or giggles at the part about castration. It's been a great ice-breaker. This writer had also conjectured that "-el(l)" and "-il(l)" were either dialect variations of "al(l" for "stall" -- or similar reductions of words like "dell" or "hill". This makes perfect sense in folk etymology -- an understanding of a word's origin based on feelings and hearsay -- great fun but fictitious. The Oxford English Dictionary and other sources have more interesting things to say about the word. The suffix "-all" -- and other variations, including it turns out "-hal" and "-ald" -- seem to come from "haugh" as in "the haugh where wethers are kept" -- referring to an alluvial flat along a river, a low-lying meadow in a river valley, from Middle English "hawch" and Old English "healh" or "halh" meaning a nook, hollow, recess, or secluded spot. Headwaters of "Wetherall" nameThe geographical origins of "Wetherall" and its varieties are obscure but are said to constitute a "Yorks-Notts group of surnames" (Basil Cottle, The Penguin Dictionary of Surnames, London: Allen Lane, 1978, 2nd edition, 1967). The surnames are in fact not that uncommon in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, and older graveyards in these counties appear to have plenty of "Wetherall" headstones. If the York and Nottingham areas of English are indeed the source of the surname, then it migrated from there to Cumberland, which is northwest of York, and from there further west to the northern parts of Ireland. Wetheralls in North America seem to have migrated from both Ireland and England. This writer had speculated that "Wetherall" might be a Welsh name. He can no longer remember where he got this notion, but he's certain he didn't make it up. He's not that knowledgable about British history. In hindsight, he admits his ignorance allowed him to lean toward Welsh because it sounded more romantic than English, Scottish, or Irish.
McWetherall? O'Wetherall? But apparently "Wetherall" is more Anglic than Celtic -- which puts yours truly in the awkward position of being at least partly related to the English imperialists who conquered other kingdoms on the islands before the United Kingdom and Ireland expanded around the world. To add to his everlasting shame, the conquering in the islands and territories beyond seems to have been aided and abetted by not a few Irish and other Wetheralls in uniform defending the Crown from native uprisings. Yikes! I'm one of th, th, those bloody WASPs! Wetheral PrioryWetheral ("-al" not "all") -- a village in the Cumberland area of England now called Cumbria -- has also been recorded as "Wetherhala" and "Wederhala". Today the village of Wetheral is a suburb of the city of Carlisle. It is best known as the site of the Benedictine Wetheral Priory, founded in 1106 in Cumberland. Only the gatehouse and a length of wall, which appear to be 15th century structures, remain. The gatehouse is designated a National Heritage site and is owned and cared for by English Heritage. Carlisle city was built on the ruins of a Roman settlement immediately to the south of Hadrian's Wall. The wall was built by Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrianus Augustus (76-138 AD), the emperor of Rome from 117 to 138, to keep Scotish barbarians out of Roman Britain. For a while -- until the 11th century -- Carlisle was part of Scotland. Then William II (c1056-1100), the son of William the Conqueror (c1028-1087), the Norman who invaded England in 1066, drove the Scots north and re-fortified the ruins of Hadrian's Wall to protect the area, and England, against Scotland. Wetherall migrations in England and IrelandSome older Wetherall families in North America trace their surnames to Northern Ireland, where Wetheralls had migrated from the area of Wetheral Priory, near Carlisle, during the 17th century English wars involving Ireland. The first migration took place during the English conquest of Ireland by Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) from 1649 to 1653, after which Cromwell granted some land to a Wetherall who had served in his army. The second migration followed the Battle of the Boyne, fought across the Boyne river on the east coast of Ireland in 1690 between King William III (1650-1702) and King James II (1633-1701). William III, a Protestant, had deposed James II, a Catholic, in 1688, and James II was attempting to regain the English throne. William III won the battle and granted some land to a Wetherall who had served in his army. A number of descendants of this family served in Royal military units all over the world. Wetheralls in North AmericaThough the jury is still out -- "Wetherall" does not seem to appear in North America until the 18th century. "Wetherell" appears as a surname of a few English migrants arriving at Plymouth in the early 17th century. Some apparently later settled in New London, Connecticut, where Daniel Wetherell, born in England, became a probate judge. He was a town clerk and commissioner around 1666-1676, and the custom-master for the port of New London until 1700 (Dictionary of National Biography, from notes written by Ullie Hardman, circa 1970s). Three generations of Wetheralls who traced their families to the William III migration served in the growing empire's North American service in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Sir Frederick Augustus Wetherall (1754-1842), the son of John Wetherall, served in Royal British forces throughout in many parts of the far-flung empire, including the the West Indies and India. His military career began during the Revolutionary War in North America, in which he served in British regiments in the defense of Boston, and in actions at other British outposts. By 1799 he was serving on the staff of the Duke of Kent, who was then the Commander-in-Chief in North America, and in 1803 he raised a regiment in Nova Scotia. Much of his service would be in Canada. He had become a general by the time of his death in Castlehill, in England, the home of the Duke of Kent, who was Queen Victoria's father. Sir George Augustus Wetherall (1788-1868), Frederick Augustus Wetherall's son, was Educated in England. In 1803 he served as a lieutenant in the Nova Scotia regiment raised by his father. By 1806 he had become a capitan, and by 1809 a brigade-major serving under his father at the Cape of Good Hope. He went on to become an aide-de-camp to the queen, a major-general and lieutenant-general, and by the time of his death, in Sandhurst, England, he had become a general. Sir Edward Robert Wetherall (d1869), son of Geoerge Augustus Wetherall, joined the army in 1834 as an ensign in his father's regiment, and served in the Canadian rebellion. He served in number of overseas posts, including China in 1857 and India, and like his father, later become an aide-de-camp to the queen. He then served in Ireland, and was an under-secretary in Ireland in 1868 but died in Dublin the following year, shortly after he was promoted to major-general. All this comes from notes this writer's maternal grandmother -- Ullie (Hunter) Hardman -- compiled in the late 1960s after doing library work on her own ancestral families. Her daughter, my mother, Orene, had married a Wetherall, but Grandma did not take an interest in the name until 1967, when my brother married, at a time when she was trying to reconstruct as much as she could of her own family history. Sometime in the late 1960s, Grandma wrote the name of my brother's (then) wife on a small blue spiral-bound notebook, and proceeded to fill it with citations and paraphrases of information she found on "Wetherall" and related names, all cribbed from common library reference books, along with her own comments on the meaning of such endeavors. Grandma Ullie's primary source was Dictionary of National Biography, which can now be perused on the Internet. See in particular 1885-1900, Volume 60 articles attributed to Ernest Marsh Lloyd. She also culled the Dictionary of American Biography, compiled by the American Council of Learned Societies and published by Charles Scribner's Sons, originally in 20 volumes (1928-1936), and later in 10 volumes each comprising two of the original volumes (1946). The dictionary includes around 15,000 entries, mostly of people who had "made names" for themselves so to speak -- as it was essentially a "who's who" not unlike those that flood the market today. And she consulted A Dictionary of the Family Surnames of the United Kingdom, endeavoured by Mark Antony Lower (London: John Russell Smith, MDCCCLX). This tome, which is part of the Patronymica Britannica, says of "Wetherell, Wetherall, and Wetherill" that "Almost all the families of this name trace to the county of Durham [] and there is little doubt of their derivation from Wetheral, co. Cumberland, remarkable for its priory." The dictionary also lists Wetherden, Wetherfield, Wetherherd, and Wetherley. (Page 378) Surname vanityMy grandmother was typical of her generation in that, lacking easy access to vital records, she relied almost entirely on oral and written testimony from relatives, and whatever anecdotal material she could find. When talking about her family history research in conversations I tape recorded in 1973, she lamented how many documents concerning her own family had family members had discarded over the years. She said she was able to gather personal information for only about 3 generations, which she saw as limit of most families. Library work, she pointed out, was good only for general, not personal, information. Grandma knew that, despite the hype about name fame, it really didn't matter, and she said so in the notebook.
Ullie went on about "Wetheralls" and "Wetherells" and "Wetherills" here, there, and everywhere -- then returned to her philosophizing about the meaning it all.
William B. Wetherall admired his mother-in-law and credited Orene's energy, compassion, and sense of humor to her inspiration. |