Whatmore Family History

An old adage has it that families last but three oaks. If some oaks can attain the age of 400 years, that gives families a time span of some 1200 years.

A Robert Watmough was assessed for tax in 1379  - six hundred and thirty years ago - so it would appear that the Watmough/Watmer/Watmore/Whatmore family still has some time left.

  Click to enlarge

The ancient oak tree at Shotton Hall in Shropshire    Copyright: Rhys Whatmore

In 1983, Derek E Whatmore of Hove counted all the Whatmores and Watmores in  the UK telephone directories. From the figures he calculated that there were then approximately 1288 individuals with the surname Whatmore in the UK and approximately 756 individuals with the surname Watmore. If those individuals named Whatmore or Watmore living elsewhere in the World are added to Derek’s  figures, and we then add all those in the UK and in the rest of the World with the surname Watmough - it is clear that there is little danger that our family name will die out for some time yet.

Oak trees, however, lose their old branches as new ones grow, and this also seems to be true of families.

The start of a branch of a family tree is a purely arbitary choice for a family historian but the marriage in 1785 (224 years ago) at Kinlet in Shropshire of Thomas Watmore to Ann Brooks seemed to me to be the appropriate time to choose for the start of my own branch of the family - the ‘Kinlet’ branch. I have tried to trace all the descendants of this marriage and I believe I have identified some 95% of Thomas and Anne’s descendants, down to the present day. The recent publication of the 1911 census has now enabled me check on children born between 1901 and 1911.

Here are some statistics:

So how much longer will the Whatmore name survive in the ‘Kinlet’ branch? Not for long it would seem. There appear to be only two young Whatmores in the whole World of an age to carry the name on through their  male children.

Does it matter? The name itself is not dying out. If the current generation of our branch can have happy, healthy and fulfilling lives - that is all we should ask. Indeed, what about the female descendants - they are of equal importance to  the male descendants, even though after marriage they carry a multitude of different surnames.

Family history is a very chauvinist pastime - concentrating usually on male descent. It is thus ironic that there seem to be many more female family historians than males. In my research on the ‘Kinlet’ branch I have pursued the female lines as vigorously as I have pursued the male lines, although I must admit that when female Whatmores have married a Smith or a Jones I have probably stopped my investigations into their line at that point.

Along the river Severn between Bridgnorth and Bewdley there are numerous families with differing surnames who knowingly, or unknowingly carry in their veins the blood of the ‘Kinlet’ Whatmores. In the end we are all inter-related and valuable members of the human race.