Wetherbee History, Family Crest & Coats of Arms

Origins Available:
England

Etymology of Wetherbee

What does the name Wetherbee mean?

Wetherbee is one of the many new names that came to England following the Norman Conquest of 1066. The Wetherbee family lived at Wetherby in West Yorkshire, a market town and civil parish within the metropolitan borough of the City of Leeds. "The Saxon name of this town, whence the present is obviously deduced, was Wederbi, a term intended to designate its situation on a bend of the river Wharfe." 1 Today in the United States, there are two towns listed: Weatherby, Missouri; and Weatherby Lake, Missouri

Early Origins of the Wetherbee family

The surname Wetherbee was first found in West Yorkshire where one of the first records was of Ivo de Werreby in 1214; and Richard de Wetherby in 1302. 2 Later the Yorkshire Poll Tax Rolls of 1379 listed Robertas de Wethirby as living there at that time. 3

Conjecturally the Wetherby family are descended from Ralph of Intwood, who held the lands and village of Intwood from Eudo, Steward to William the Conqueror. Intwood consisted of a church, a mill, nine horses, and thirty sheep, as recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086. 4

Wetherby is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Wedrebi, thought to derive from wether- or ram-farm or else meaning "settlement on the bend of a river". 5 Local folklore has it that when heavy snow storms hit the county, Wetherby does not get as much because the "Weather Goes By."

Early History of the Wetherbee family

This web page shows only a small excerpt of our Wetherbee research. Another 77 words (6 lines of text) covering the year 1461 is included under the topic Early Wetherbee History in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.

Wetherbee Spelling Variations

Anglo-Norman names tend to be marked by an enormous number of spelling variations. This is largely due to the fact that Old and Middle English lacked any spelling rules when Norman French was introduced in the 11th century. The languages of the English courts at that time were French and Latin. These various languages mixed quite freely in the evolving social milieu. The final element of this mix is that medieval scribes spelled words according to their sounds rather than any definite rules, so a name was often spelled in as many different ways as the number of documents it appeared in. The name was spelled Wetherby, Weatherby, Wetherbie, Wetherbee, Witherby and many more.

Early Notables of the Wetherbee family

More information is included under the topic Early Wetherbee Notables in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.

Wetherbee Ranking

In the United States, the name Wetherbee is the 15,298^th most popular surname with an estimated 2,487 people with that name. 6

Wetherbee migration to the United States +

Because of the political and religious discontent in England, families began to migrate abroad in enormous numbers. Faced with persecution and starvation at home, the open frontiers and generally less oppressive social environment of the New World seemed tantalizing indeed to many English people. The trip was difficult, and not all made it unscathed, but many of those who did get to Canada and the United States made important contributions to the young nations in which they settled. Some of the first North American settlers with Wetherbee name or one of its variants:

Wetherbee Settlers in United States in the 19th Century

John Wetherbee, who settled in New York in 1820
C Wetherbee, who arrived in San Francisco, California in 1850 7
Miss Wetherbee, aged 18, who landed in America, in 1894

Wetherbee Settlers in United States in the 20th Century

Garaner Wetherbee, who settled in America, in 1903
Mrs. Gardner Wetherbee, aged 21, who immigrated to the United States, in 1906
Chas. L. Wetherbee, aged 59, who landed in America, in 1908
Mrs. T. E. Wetherbee, aged 38, who landed in America, in 1910
Caroline B. Wetherbee, aged 36, who settled in America, in 1910
... (More are available in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.)

Contemporary Notables of the name Wetherbee (post 1700) +

George Faulkner Wetherbee (1851-1920), American-born, English landscape painter
Fred "Fritz" Wetherbee (b. 1936), five-time Emmy Award winning American writer and television host
Captain (USN, Ret.) James "Jim" Donald Wetherbee (b. 1952), American naval officer and former NASA astronaut with 6 shuttle missions and over 1,592 hours in space 8
Henry Wetherbee Henshaw (1850-1930), American ornithologist

Historic Events for the Wetherbee family +

Grover Shoe factory

Mr. Forest Wetherbee (b. 1878), American employee of the Grover Shoe factory in Brockton, Massachusetts on 20th March 1905 when the boiler exploded and collapsed the wooden building; he survived 9

Citations +

Lewis, Samuel, A Topographical Dictionary of England. Institute of Historical Research, 1848, Print.
Reaney, P.H and R.M. Wilson, A Dictionary of English Surnames. London: Routledge, 1991. Print. (ISBN 0-415-05737-X)
Bardsley, C.W, A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames: With Special American Instances. Wiltshire: Heraldry Today, 1901. Print. (ISBN 0-900455-44-6)
Williams, Dr Ann. And G.H. Martin, Eds., Domesday Book A Complete Translation. London: Penguin, 1992. Print. (ISBN 0-141-00523-8)
Mills, A.D., Dictionary of English Place-Names. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Print. (ISBN 0-19-869156-4)
"What are the 5,000 Most Common Last Names in the U.S.?". NameCensus.com, https://namecensus.com/last-names/
Filby, P. William, Meyer, Mary K., Passenger and immigration lists index : a guide to published arrival records of about 500,000 passengers who came to the United States and Canada in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. 1982-1985 Cumulated Supplements in Four Volumes Detroit, Mich. : Gale Research Co., 1985, Print (ISBN 0-8103-1795-8)
NASA Astronauts Homepage. (Retrieved 2010, September 27) James "Jim" Wetherbee. Retrieved from http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/wetherbe.html
California Digital Newspaper from 21st March 1905 (retrieved on 5th August 2021.) Retrieved from https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SFC19050321.2.19&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------1