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1901 CENSUS

Aged 18yrs Butcher
Living at 12 High St Wellingborough with his widowed mother (Butcher)
Brother Fritz - Managing Butcher
His three sisters
Barabara Lena
Gretchen
Olga



1911 CENSUS

George Carl Rothermel 29 Single Butcher's Manager - Visitor
Bourne William 36 Grocer's Assistant
Bourne Beatrice 29 married one year

Living at 44 Barracks Road Newcastle under Lyme Staffs

He died in Blackpool in 1961

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From George Carl's granddaughters

To the best of our knowledge, he was born on 12 July 1883.

He died at the age, we think, of 79, as the result of a stroke following a hernia operation that went wrong. He couldn't have a general anaesthetic because of the shrapnel in his legs and the local anaesthetic used wasn't (according to him) effective.

We moved to Blackpool, from Newcastle-under-Lyme Staffs. as a family, in 1952. He got a job, part-time, with a local butcher, where he worked until he was 76.

Mum wasn't very communicative about the past. All I know for certain is that Grandy spent all his money on obtaining documents and getting them translated into English, and by the time his money ran out, whatever it was he was chasing had gone into Chancery. Mum said he didn't want anyone to know he was broke. Maybe that's how he became sort of 'removed' from the rest of the Rothermel clan?

Other snippets of info; We have been told that Grandy went to either Oxford or Cambridge to complete his education in 'Master-Butchery'. Also, he used to ride 'with the hunt'. His riding crop is still with us!

Mum's earliest memories of him were seeing the ships leave the docks with a band playing "Danny Boy". She hated the tune ever since. I remember Gram telling me that he got his wounds on the Somme, when he and another soldier were stretchering an officer away. There was an explosion, and the stretcher and officer were no more, and he was badly wounded

His medals state

203351 Private G.C. RUTHERMEL - North Staffs Regiment.

Names:

NOM DE GUERRE

Is a name used by an individual as an alternative to their true name.

In most legal systems, a name assumed for a nonfraudulent purpose is a legal name and usable as the person's true name, which is however preferred or required for various official purposes.

Aliases – men appear under the names they enlisted under and were known to the army. Many men signed up under an alias, for various reasons, such as:

- pre-War regulars re-joining the army having previously deserted
- rejected volunteers when volunteering again at a different recruiting centre
- men who wanted not to be traced by family (e.g. parents) or others
- men who simply wanted to leave behind their past and begin anew

Place of Birth
Not every man knew where he was born or, if he did, gave it correctly.

Age
Many men gave a false age on enlisting, because they were either below or above service age at various points in the war.

MEMORIES FROM SHIRLEY

The snow meant nothing to her as when she was growing up ( in the Potteries) it used to snow for weeks on end. They used to walk to school wading through waist high, their biggest treat was having ice cream for tea every night when it snowed. Her mother used to make up the mixture with egg yolks and milk and put it in a pudding basin. She and her sisters used to go in the garden and bury the basin in two foot of snow, then take it out every night to eat some ice cream. They didn't have a fridge whilst she was growing up but a 'zinc box' in a shadey place in the garden where her mother kept the meat and fish. They had a larder with a marble slab and a zinc mesh window where mother kept the butter and lard.
She can remember her Liberty bodices and later on her suspender belt which had rubber buttons so that they could be put through the mangle without the buttons braking. They could only afford two of each , one on and one in the wash so it was imperative that they dried quickly. They didn't have a washing machine.

After the war woollen cardigans and jumpers shrank with all the washing so she and her sisters had to sit and cut them into strips 1 inch wide and with large knitting needles used to make bedside rugs. Their mother took them to jumble sales and they bought woollen coats in as many colours as they could. They would sit indoors in the winter and cut them into strips 1 inch by 6 inches and with a 3/4 hoop push the strips through a hessian strip, before this they drew patterns with chalk on the hessian and used the different colours. They laid these rugs all over the house on the lino during the winter. This was in the 50's !

From Wendy Hargreaves (Tasmania)

George and Lizzie were married 15 July 1912 at St George Church in Newcastle Under Lyme in Staffordshire. I haven''t got the original copy of their marriage but I do have all the information from it. Elizabeth Hargreaves age 28 living at 1 Foden Street Father Charles deceased Time-keeper
George Carl Rothermel 29 living at 60 Broad Street Worcester, Butcher, Father George deceased Butcher
Witnesses William Bourne and Adelaide Maria Hargreaves.

Elizabeth (Lizzie)Hargreaves who married George Carl Rothermel was my husband''s Grandfather''s sister

Vera Jones
She comes from the Hargreaves side, and here it is.

Her grandmother, Beatrice Hargreaves (a teacher), was sister to my Grandmother, Elizabeth Hargreaves (before she married Grandy). Beatrice married William Bourne. They had a daughter Doris. She married William Powner (a plumber). They had one child, my cousin Vera, who married Howard Jones.

Shirley (granddaughter of George Carl)

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1871 Census Dover Hougham Kent- The South Front Barracks Western Heights
Charles Hargreaves 35 Colour Sergeant Rifle Bri. born Stoke Staffordshire. Mary Jane Hargreaves wife 25 born Cork, Ireland- Lillian Deverell Hargreaves dau age 3 born Devonport Devon - Charles Frederick Urgent Hargreaves son born on Board the Urgent off Eldgstone
1881 Census Charles Hargreaves was at the Whittington Barracks Military Depot Died 1900 In Newcastle U. Lyme age 67 making his birth year 1833 not 1835 On the Baptism records it states that his parents were John and Maria Hargreaves who lived at Cliff Bank. On the 1891 census they lived at 18 Harrison Street in Newcastle Unde Lyme

There have been 10 children listed on various census's

Lillian1868 - Charles 1870 - Robert 1872 - Ethel 1873 - John Horace 1877 - Lucy 1879 - Beatrice 1880 - Adelaide 1883 - Elizabeth 1885 - Alice 1888

Gram always maintained that she was one of THIRTEEN children!

Now Vera has told me that she had two Aunties on the Hargreaves side, sisters of Doris. The eldest was Margaret, who never married. Then there was Doris, and the youngest was Marie, who married "Mr. Patterson". I'm afraid we don't have a Christian name. Shirley

George and Lizzie had one daughter Beryl

Information on Elizabeth's siblings
Marriage:
Beatrice Hargreaves age 27 from Heath Street Newcastle Under Lyme father Charles Hargreaves deceased married William Bourne age 36 from 44 Barracks Road, father William Hale Bourne deceased Farmer. Witnesses Philip Bourne, Horace Hargreaves, Adelaide hargreaves and Nellie Taylor. Horace and Adelaide Hargreaves are Beatrice''s siblings

Extract from a letter to the Rothermels in Nottingham from Derek Butler dated 6th May 1998 who was obviously researching the family:

To date the only details I have concerning my grandfather's origins is that he had a business and raised a family of two sons and three daughters in Wellingborough, none of whom referred to his early life.

My grandfather's second son Carl. or Karl, settled in Newcastle-under-Lyme and was certainly there in the 1920's but there are no Rothermels listed in Staffordshire today.

From a further letter dated 13.12.1998:

I recall dimly visiting Carl when I was about three years of age, but I must admit the only clear picture I have retained of the visit was the enormous amount of dust that lay everywhere. I still see the marks of my two fingers on the surface of a sideboard. We had no contact, to my knowledge after that. If Carl had a son the possibility is that he may have been killed during the war, in which case the name would have disappeared from the locality.

So little was spoken about the extended family that I had no idea there were relatives still living there.

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