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THE GORNALL ~ GORNELL FAMILIES (variations of the spelling of the name - GURNELL, GURNALL, GORNER) For information - Please contact: Catherine Proctor ...................................................................................................................... CATHERINE ELIZABETH GORNALL was born July 16, 1916 in Westminster, London, England
1939 In London 2002 in Vancouver, BC
On April 13th, 1939 she married Ernest William Hazelwood in London.
I am her daughter, born Anne Catherine Hazelwood, in Melksham, Wiltshire in October 1940. Now married my name is Catherine Proctor.
Until the late 1990's my mother had little knowledge of the origins of her ancestors, and other than the Baptismal Certificate of her father, George Henry Gornall, she had no other family documents or photographs. She was an only child. When she was just eleven years of age, in 1927, her mother died with pneumonia. Her father was then sixty years of age, and he was so distraught at the loss of his wife, that he felt he could not bring up a little girl on his own. He therefore placed her in foster homes and several children's homes and orphanages. Although she saw her father on a regular basis, it was not that often and as he was extremely deaf as a result of his many years in the British Army, communication between them was limited. George Henry Gornall died during WWII in 1942, after he was injured in an air raid on London. A bomb made a direct hit on his house, which was reduced to a heap of rubble. Sadly, all our GORNALL family photographs and documents were lost that day. It was fortunate for us that my mother had by chance kept her father's Baptismal Certificate in her own home. That baptismal certificate from St. Margaret's Church, Westminster showing the date of birth for George Henry Gornall to be October 4th, 1867 started us down the Genealogical path, towards finding out about our GORNALL ancestors. During his lifetime, my grandfather told my mother what little he knew about his parents and grandparents. His father was GEORGE GORNALL, born in London in 1843, and who married the former Mary Ann Higgins in Lambeth. His grandfather was Philip Gornell (note the spelling of the surname), who was a Master Boot Maker, and who married Maria Foster in London. My grandfather told my mother he was the eldest of ten children, and that he had run away from home at the age of 13 and lived with the gypsies for a year or so, until he joined the British Army after lying about his age to get in. My mother had met one or two of her uncles and aunts. No more was known. She had no further contact with any of her Gornall family after her father died in 1942. In 1997, when my mother was 81 years of age, she asked me if I could find out which regiment of the British Army was home to her father for close to thirty years from about 1883 to 1913. She recalled seeing his army discharge document and some medals from the Boer War but they were lost in the bombing of his house. This request from my mother to go in search of my grandfather's regiment started me on a fascinating genealogical journey. We haven't yet been able to find out the name of the regiment of my grandfather, and perhaps we may never do so now after having looked for some time. Did he use a different name to join up? Who knows? . However, in the process of our research, we have been able to find out where our GORNALL ancestors came from We were surprised to find that our family origins date back to Preston, Lancashire, from 1642 and before that to the area north of the River Ribble in Amounderness. Furthermore, we discovered that we had 76 male GORNALLS in our family who were BURGESSES IN THE PRESTON GUILD MERCHANT, going back to the first Burgess, Hugh Gornall, an Ale House Keeper in 1642. We still have some members of the family who remain as Burgesses in the Guild to this very day. In the space of five years, our GORNALL family tree has gone from five names to more than eight hundred, and we still have a long way to go. Because the name GORNALL is not a common one outside of Lancashire, I decided to conduct a ONE NAME STUDY to see if I could trace the GORNALL families back to their Lancashire roots and also to determine, as closely as I could, possibly how many families started out with the name GORNALL, GORNER, GURNALL, GURNELL OR GORNELL. It would appear that the name GORNALL or GURNALL, were the first spellings of the name. My great great grandfather spelled his name GORNELL, and so did his children, one of whom, Edward Gornell, went to the United States and founded a Brush Works in Chicago in the late 1890's. That is still a thriving business thanks to his descendant the late Raymond Gornell and his children There are both spellings of the name in our family but the most common is GORNALL. In 2003 I joined the GUILD OF ONE NAME STUDIES - www.one-name.org . For anyone contemplating starting a ONE NAME STUDY, I recommend joining this Guild. Their on line forum is very informative and their members are extremely supportive. They have members who are very experienced in genealogy and in particular ONE NAME STUDIES, and they are very helpful to a beginner. To compile this information, I have had a lot of help from other family members whom I have found as new cousins, and now after an International Gornall Family Gathering here in Qualicum Beach, British Columbia, Canada in July of this year 2005, so many of us from England and the United States are now much closer having met each other personally this year. Nearly all the credit for the help in researching our own London family history goes to my cousin Janet Stemp (nee Gornall), her father Harry Gornall and to Peter Gornall of Sussex. I would not have been able to trace our ancestors back to LANCASHIRE, before 1801, had it not been for the diligent efforts of my late relative, Dr. Richard Guest Gornall, who researched his LANCASHIRE branch of our GORNALLS, in the 1970's. I never met Richard Guest Gornall and I regret that very much, because when I came across his research work thirty years after the fact, I realized that both he and I had the same mission; i.e. to find our first GORNALLs, and to trace them back to the beginning of their Lancashire roots. Richard's son Anthony Guest Gornall and his nephew Dr. Christopher Guest Gornall have both been extremely helpful in providing me copies of information left by their relative and for recent updates. To them both I am very grateful.
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