Remember me in the family Tree
My name, My days, My strife;
Then I'll ride upon the wings of time
And live an endless life. Goetsch
Matilda Jane Amelia Gay Wherrett Tomlinson; it's time to put Matilda in the right place with the right name. Below is Matilda's Certificate of Marriage to Edward Aaron Wherrett Sr. They were married at the Registrar's Office in Bath, Somerset, England, on Monday, 16 February 1846, one hundred seventy two years ago today (16 February 2018).
Edward was twenty one years old; Matilda was nineteen, three months shy of her twentieth birthday.
Their marriage certificate, below, has an enlarged view of Edward's and Matilda's signatures in their own handwriting. This is the only personal thing I have of theirs. I am presuming that because they can sign their name and not an x representing a signature (that is so commonly seen on old documents) they can read and write. How grateful I am to have original signatures. It has helped me in Identifying Edward in other important documents in comparing his handwriting. The next best thing would be a picture to surface of Edward and/or Matilda. That would be a miracle but, I believe in miracles.
Matilda is my dad's great grandmother.
Certificate of 1846 Marriage solemnized at the Register Office in the District of Bath in the County of Somerset.
Dad (Vern Wherrett Tomlinson) told me his middle name Wherrett came from his Great-grandmother's maiden name on his father's side. Dads know, right?
Several years after my dad died (1991), I found the Tomlinson family group sheet in one of Dad's drawers . As a newbie just learning how to research my family history, I took the information from the group sheet and what I was told by my dad as fact.
It took me two years to unscramble the information only to realize Dad 's explanation was was not a fact and the Tomlinson group sheet was not correct either. I was so persistent with what I was told to be fact only to finally realize it wasn't true.
Dad's father (George Wherrett Tomlinson) was named after his grandfather George Tomlinson born in 1822 in England, Matilda's second husband. Did George W. Tomlinson know it was his step-grandfather and not his biological grandfather? Maybe not or maybe he did and was told not to talk about it; a family secret.
What I learned from this experience is that all family stories need to be researched carefully to either clarify the family lore or to verify that it is the real story.
My research started in 1997; it has been an interesting journey since uncovering the fact that our family surname of Tomlinson is not our biological name. We are the Wherretts.
Fact; we do have the surname Tomlinson in our line. It's on Dad's maternal line going back to his great-great grandmother Maria Tomlinson Cashmore. Below are pictures of all his "grandmothers" on his mother's side.
