Leonard Langdale Wrathall

This page contains accounts of the lineage of Leonard Langdale Wrathall.
In 1999, Grahame Pike related that he was doing research for the South Australian Museum involving Leonard Langdale Wrathall , who came to Australia via Papua New Guinea, where he as engaged in Oil exploration for the Australian Government in 1914 as a Geologist. He was born in Yorkshire, apparently. Leonard's colleague, Ernest Sterne Usher, the main subject of Grahame's research, was born in 1879 and the two men look in the photographs to be about the same age.

Leonard Langdale Wrathall doesn't appear in my Linton or Burnsall parish records prior to 1900. Roy Wrathall looked at his copy of the Yorkshire IGI, and found no Leonards at all. But recent research by Geraldine Simister of Lancashire indicates there is a Leonard (b. 1880) in the 1881 Hornby, Lancashire census.

Perhaps anyone with info on Leonard will send Grahame an e-mail at gpike(at)camtech(DOt)net(DOt)au .

Brenda J. (Smith) Heinsma mentions the following:

We just returned from western Canada where we dropped in on my Aunt Evelyn (Wrathall) Wrathall widow of my Mom's brother, Lindsay Layton Wrathall. In the brief time we were with Evelyn I asked her if she wished to give me the names of her father's siblings to the best of her recollection.

Descendants of John WRATHALL - AUG 15 1999
--------------------------
FIRST GENERATION

  1. John WRATHALL was born in 1845. He died in OCT 1938 in aged 93, lived in England all his life..
    John WRATHALL and wife of J. Wrathall FOSTER had the following children:
  2. i. William Foster WRATHALL.
  3. ii. 'Sissie' WRATHALL.
  4. iii. Isobel WRATHALL
  5. iv. Mary WRATHALL.
  6. v. Nellie WRATHALL
  7. vi. Janie WRATHALL.
  8. vii. Leonard WRATHALL
  9. viii. WRATHALL.

As of 2001, we hadn't yet found any other info on any of these except possibly Leonard, whom Grahame is looking for. It looks like Leonard was born around 1880. Then Langdale could have been one of his grandmother's maiden names. Also in 2001, Roy Wrathall passed long the following about Brenda's data:

The Ingleton / Bentham branch of the family are somewhat unknown to me at the moment ... even though I went to school in Low Bentham for 7 years !

I'll try to find out some information about that branch - I spoke with my brother [James] last night however he has no information on them either so I'll try my cousin who lives near Bentham and see if she can help at all otherwise I'll try the telephone book.

In April 2002, Derek Wrathall had the following to say:
I have looked at the page concerning Leonard Langdale Wrathall and am sure that the obituary of LEONARD L. WRATHALL (The Keighley News, Saturday 19th May 1928, page 6) is for the man that G. Pike is researching. However, as he died aged 36 in 1928, that made his birth year 1892 and in the St. Catherine's House Index is the entry for him in the 1st quarter of 1892, registered at Keighley. I have also looked for the birth of his father, Charles Coulton Wrathall, but without success, I did however find his marriage in the 2nd quarter of 1889 again at Keighley. This rather eliminates any connection with Hornby. Charles Coulton Wrathall died in his 75th year according to his obituary so he was born around 1863. I will look again at the St.CHI around that time when I am next in Halifax. A small point, but I noticed that C. C. W.'s residence at the time of his death was called Langdale.
Since the St. Catherine's House Index corroborates the date of 1892, we might assume that G. Pike said that Leonard looks the same age as the other chap (born in 1879) due to the poor quality of the photo. We also managed to locate two other items on Leonard Langdale or his father Charles Coulton : In December 2002, Derek Wrathall contributed the following about Leonard Langdale Wrathall's family:

Last week I was going through a lot of the copies of letters and papers given to me by Jim Wrathall of Garstang [Roy Wrathall's brother James Stephen, who died in Garstang August 15, 2002] when I first started looking into our family history. One caught my eye, being from Josephine Wrathall of New South Wales, Australia, and I will quote extracts from it:-

I will give you all the information I can as my husband, David, was killed in a tractor accident 18 years ago and was an only child. He was not well informed about his relatives and his father, Leonard Langdale Wrathall, died when he was 8 years old in Timor on an oil search expedition for Timor Oil ( I think). His Mother, Nellie Medwin Wrathall (Williams) was Australian but David was born in London on 16 July 1918, registered at Brentford, County Middlesex. At the end of the war Leonard retirned to exploring for oil as a geologist travelling all over Europe and Finally in Timor where he died of blackwater fever, a result of malaria, at the age of 36 years. Nellie and David came back to Australia to live with her mother and stepfather. Leonard's parents were cotton millers in Filey, Yorkshire [south of Scarborough, on the east coast] and he had a sister, Mollie, whom we met in 1956 on a visit to England. Mollie lived in Scarborough but was a widow and I have no record of her married name.....................................I have no other records to draw on and the only other inquiry I have had was 45 years ago when Mrs. De Salis arrived at my home, then in Mosman, Sydney, to ask if we were related as she had been a Wrathall, but my husband couldn't help..........................My son, Thomas Charles Wrathall has 4 sons to carry on the name and I am sure the boys will be keen to know more of the Wrathall origins as time goes by.

This letter was written to Cathie Sibbick in 1995. I rang Cathie to see if she had had more recent contact but she has had to put family history aside for a while.... Around 1995 she had regular contact with Jim Wrathall and had written to many Wrathalls, including a number in Australia. With her husband she had visited Australia and New Zealand and had in fact had her photograph taken by the Wrathall sign at Mangonui. I will write to Josephine and pass on copies of the newspaper cuttings re Leonard Langdale Wrathall and his parents.
Hamish Lonsdale-Wrathall's transcription of Wrathall birth, marriage and death records for New South Wales confirms that Leonard married Nellie Williams in Mosman in 1915.

In Jan. 2003, Derek Wrathall mentioned the following about Leonard's sister, who is identified as Miss E. Wrathall in his obituary:

Regarding the sister of Leonard L Wrathall, I think this would be the Ethel Maud born 1890 1st quarter and registered in Keighley - from the St. Catherine's House Index. There doesn't seem to be much consistency as to what "Molly" is a diminutive for. In the Wrathall/De Salis tree I have been looking at, I note that Kathleen Mary Garston Wrathall was known as Molly.

Charles Coulton Wrathall

The L.D.S. FamilySearch site has the following data from 1881 British Census of Yorkshire:

 Name  Relation Marital Status Gender Age Birthplace Occupation
 Ellen WRATHALL   Head   Other   Female   37   Dacre Ripon, York, England   Dressmaker 
 Charles Coulton WRATHALL   Son   Unmarried   Male   17   Darley Hampsthwaite, York, England   Foreman In A Worsted Factory 
 Mary Jane WRATHALL   Daur   Unmarried   Female   15   Steeton Kildwick, York, England   Spinner In Worsted Factory 
 Ada WRATHALL   Daur      Female   12   Steeton Kildwick, York, England   Spinner In Worsted Factory 
 John Benson WRATHALL   Son      Male   10   Steeton Kildwick, York, England   Scholar 
 Thomas WRATHALL   Son      Male   8   Steeton Kildwick, York, England   Scholar 
 Alice WRATHALL   Daur      Female   5   Steeton Kildwick, York, England   Scholar 
(Dacre, Darley and Hampswaithe are villages northwest of Harrogate. Steeton is northwest of Keighley, which is 20 miles southwest of Harrogate.)
Source Information:
Dwelling:  13 Lane End
Census Place:  Keighley, York, England
Family History Library Film:  1342038
Public Records Office Reference  RG11
Piece / Folio  4346 / 32
Page Number  27

In Sept. 2005, there was this entry on Colin Hinson's page The Craven Household Almanack Directory of 1911:

WRATHALL CC, The Elms (STEETON)

Richard Coulton Wrathall

It is likely that Charles Coulton's father was Richard Coulton Wrathall, who was not listed in the 1881 census because he died in 1880. In Dec. 2003, Derek Wrathall found some additional data regarding this family: This indicates that Richard Coulton's father was probably John Wrathall (b. 1795), the second son of John Wrathall and Elizabeth Leech, as listed in the Descendants of John Wrathall and Anne Pickersgill. Derek found further evidence about the family of Richard and Charles C. Wrathall, which he describes here:
[In Dec. '03] I spent an hour in Keighley library. I first looked at the 1871 census for Steeton and found the family at 9 Lane End, Steeton as follows I also looked at the 1881 census on film and found Ellen as Head of household with W (i.e. widow) as marital status, not "Other". However, I am confident that Richard Coulton Wrathall and his wife Ellen were the parents of Charles Coulton Wrathall and that CCW was born either just before or just after they were married.
In Jan. 2004, Derek learned the following about Richard Coulton Wrathall's family:
To hopefully throw more light on the Richard Coulton Wrathall family, I sent for a copy of his marriage certificate, which arrived this morning. I had hoped that the full addresses of Richard and his bride would be given, and give a pointer as to where to look for the registration of the birth of Charles Coulton Wrathall.

Richard married Ellen Hall on 16 January 1864 at the Parish Church of Hampsthwaite. He was stated to be a bachelor, of full age, farmer, of Keighley, father, John Wrathall, farmer, and she was a spinster, aged 19, of Darley, father Benson Hall, labourer. The witnesses were Thomas Airton and Mary Longbottom. Richard could not write and there is just his mark. In my letter to the registrar I explained about Charles Coulton and my inability to find a record of his birth. On the compliment slip accompanying the certificate the registrar had written, "We have been unable to find any trace of Charles C Wrathall in Darley or Harrogate". I wonder now if his birth was ever registered.

The forename of Ellen's father explains why Charles' brother was called Thomas Benson Wrathall, but it crossed my mind that Richard and Ellen could have been cousins, given that her maiden name and her mother-in-law's maiden name were the same - Hall. Otherwise, I wonder how they got together, given the distance between Keighley and Darley.

E-MAIL: wrathall(at)rawbw(dot)com

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