Wreathalls of East Yorkshire
In November 2004, Arthur and Stella Wall of South
Australia, who can be reached at starwall(at)optusnet(dot)com(dot)au, mentioned
their interest in the Wreathil surname:
Having read your site once again, I took note there
is no reference to Wreathil. I say this as I am very interested in this variation.
as [Stella's] great-great-grandmother Rebecca Wreathel was born 28 Mar 1800
at Middleton, East Yorkshire. Her father Robert had his name spelt Wreathil,
and in turn had one son named Matthew Wreathel and another named John Wreathill,
etc. It gets very confusing, probably due to the strong accent.
I suspect that accents, plus speech impediments, could have a lot to do
with it, if one takes into consideration that most of the vicars came from
the south of England. My name of WALL is pronounced Wahl in the north east.
Arthur was originally from the Humberside. Stella's father was from Gateshead,
and her mother from Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Stella too comes from the Humberside.
We came to Oz in 1962.
As mentioned in Variant Spellings
of Wrathall , Wreathall was considered a variant of Wrathall. But we
don't see any case where names containing "il" (e.g. Wreathil) are considered
variants of Wrathall, so the question remains as to how they came up with
that intermediate spelling. It might just be a case of a Middleton parish
priest with his own spelling rules.
Arthur and Stella are working on the Wreathall line with Anthony (Tony)
Wreathall of Nottinghamshire , who can be reached at anthony(dot)wreathall(at)qmc(dot)nhs(dot)uk.
Tony mentioned the following about his research:
"Wreathall" is pronounced "REETH-all", with emphasis on the "th".
I suspect our names have a common origin with quite a few variants. You
are probably already aware that Wrathall was predominant at Burnsall in Craven
and Linton; the earliest I have seen (1560 - ish) spelt Wrethoe. Wreathall
turns up in 1626 - 8 in Burnsall. I'm not sure of the origin of the name,
but there appears to be quite an amount of research into it.
In February 2005, Ann Scruton , who can be reached at info(at)hafandeg(dot)co(dot)uk,
contributed some information and photos concerning the Wreathill family and
descendants:
Ann also discussed the history of Rebecca's family:
My husband, David, is a direct descendant of Robert Wreathill
(born abt. 1770) and Ann Wilkinson. We have photos of their daughter Rebecca
(born 1800), and her daughter and grand-daughter .... I would be very interested
in exchanging information about the family tree.
My husband David is descended via Rebecca, Mary, Emma, Fanny and Geoffrey.
The oldest photo shows Rebecca Lee née Wreathill, the couple are
her daughter Mary Lee with husband William Moore, and the young girl is Emma
Sowen, née Moore. Emma's husband committed suicide and killed 2 of
their little boys by drowning, 1 boy and 1 girl died as babies and the two
youngest boys, who were only 18 months and 1 month when their father died,
were both killed in WW1. Emma was survived by 4 daughters. Hard times!
Let me know if you have problems opening any of the attachments.....
Thank you for the website details - I'm amazed at all the information.
Until a month ago we didn't even know the name of the woman in the oldest
photo. My husband's great-aunt had written on the back "My great-grandmother
Mrs Lee".
Here are some sources of data on the WREATHALL Surname and
variants:
In Jan. 2006, the A2A site (Access to Archives)
had several Wrathell, Wreathall and Wreathill records available via its search
function in regard to activities in the East Riding of Yorkshire (with thanks
to Ian Mason, Archivist for the East
Riding of Yorkshire Archives Service).
