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The above gravestone is in Mount Carmel Cemetery,
Caradoc Township, Middlesex County, Ontario, Canada. It is the memeorial
to a William Withernwick who died on 12th March 1877 aged 69. The bottom
line reads "immigrated from Yorkshire". It seems that he was
born in Lund, East Riding in 1807.
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Taken from Ancestry.com - New York Port Records
The above document shows that William and
his wife Elizabeth emmigrated to North America in 1854, they
presumely then made their way to Ontario, Canada where William
died in 1877. Elizabeth was born in Elleker in 1809 and lived
until 1890. Although these people were not born in Withernwick
or ever lived there it is interesting in the use of the name
Withernwick used as a surname. Withernwick is a totally unique
name, there is only one Withernwick in the world, there isn't
a Withernwick, Montana or Withernwick, New South Wales. So we
can assume that the origin of the surname Withernwick is from
our village.
Click here to see census
returns from 1841-1891 for people with the surname
Withernwick, the vast majority lived in Hull. We can therefore
guess that at some time in the past, some people living in
Withernwick moved out of the village, probably to Hull and
gained the surname Withernwick, as a characteristic that
identified them. The obvious implication of this is that no
one with the surname Withernwick ever lived in the village.
It is then fascinating that one of the descendants of one such
family ended up buried in a cemetery in Canada, indeed this is
how this story started as we were contaced by a Ken
Stephenson, who kindly sent the above photo and document.
Indeed if you widen the scope to include variants of
Withernwick, the surname Witherwick is also common and is
probably also derived from Withernwick.
If anyone knows any more about the use of Withernwick as a
surname then please let us know.
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