KEVIN GOTHARD and his sister Kath MacInante popped into the Chronicle offices on their recent visit to Barnsley.
They live in Sydney, Australia, and one of the purposes of their visit to the town was to carry out family research.Kevin and Kath brought with them a family wedding photograph and they are keen to know the names of the people on it.
They know the young boy at the front of the photograph (wearing the stiff collar and sitting second from the left) is their father Wilfred Gothard and they believe the girls standing on either side of the bride and groom are their aunts, Lina and Vera Gothard.
Based on the apparent age of Wilfred, they believe the photo dates from around 1915/1917. Wilfred’s father, and Kevin and Kath’s grandfather, was John Willie Gothard who was born in Barnsley in 1879. He was recorded on the 1911 census as a coal miner/hewer.
He joined the Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI) in 1903 and was stationed at Pontefract Barracks where he was in the band. However, it is likely he was involved in another band in the Barnsley area before that time. John Willie married Martha Fritchley Trout in December 1906 in Pontefract.
The Trout family came from Bentley and Arksey where Martha’s father, John Trout, was a carpenter/joiner.Martha, who was born in 1884, was the eldest of 10 children. The others were: Lily (1886); Olivia (1888); Charles (1889); Edward (1892); John (1896); Susan (1898); Bertha (1900); Elizabeth (1902) and Walter (1906).
Upon leaving the army in 1909, John Willie returned to coal mining and lived at Hoyland. He and Martha had three children, Wilfred born 1908, Lina, 1911 and Vera in 1913.Sometime after the birth of Vera, John Willie moved his family from Yorkshire to Eythorne in Kent where he continued to work as a coal miner.
Having already being in the army, he was immediately called up at the start of the First World War in 1914.John Willie was the company bugler and, after two weeks of training in Ireland, the regiment was sent to France where on August 26 1914 it fought a fierce rearguard action against the advancing German army at Le Cateau.
By midnight on August 26, 600 of the 850 officers and men from the 2nd KOYLI had been killed. They are commemorated on a Memorial at Le Ferte Sous Jouarre outside Paris. Tragically, John Willie’s body was never found.
Martha stayed in Eythorne after his death and earned a living by taking in boarders.However, in 1922 she took the big step of taking her young family to Australia where Wilfred became apprenticed as an electrician. Lina and Martha completed their schooling.
Martha died in Newcastle, Australia, in 1929 aged 45.Kevin and Kath would be interested to know if any of our readers can identify the bride or groom or any of the relatives and guests who were at their wedding.
Information, please, to Kath Parkin, Barnsley Chronicle Newsroom, 47, Church Street, Barnsley S70 2AS.
