Author: YEWDALL, John
Biography:
YEWDALL, John (1795-1856: ODNB)
The ONDB statement that he was born on 29 Sept. 1795 at Quarries, Leeds, Yorkshire, the son of John Youdel (sic), lacks corroboration, and in the 1851 census Yewdall gave his place of birth as Horton, near Bradford, which raises the possibility that he was the John Yewdall baptised on 4 Nov. 1795 at St. Peter’s Bradford, son of John and Elizabeth Yewdall of Bowling, Bradford. Ancestry trees also contain errors. Yewdall (and variant spellings) is a relatively common name in Yorkshire and the details of his birth remain unclear. He stated in the “Preface” to The Toll-Bar (1827) that he lost his father in childhood, was the oldest (surviving?) child, was “put to business at a very tender age,” and had “never received more than three weeks’ education.” Apprenticed to a clothier in Armley as a cloth-weaver, he used his leisure “in unremitting diligence to mental improvement” and began to contribute to Walkingham’s Arithmetic. He married not Sarah Newton (ODNB) but Sarah Dyson (1798-1873) on 22 Mar. 1818 at Calverley, West Riding, Yorkshire. The Toll-Bar contains a memorial poem to her brother George Dyson. They had at least four sons and a daughter. He applied unsuccessfully several times to become an excise officer and eventually obtained the post of toll-keeper at Hunslet, near Leeds, around 1820. He lived there for the rest of his life and became assistant overseer for over twenty-five years and later registrar of births and deaths. He was also an active Methodist, involved in Sunday Schools, and was much admired for his work in the 1849 cholera outbreak in Hunslett in which 432 people died. He died of congestive heart disease and erysipelas at his house in Glasshouse Street, Hunslett, on 30 Mar. 1856, leaving his estate to his wife. She died in 1873. (ODNB 22 Jan. 2025; Goodridge; The Methodist New Connexion Magazine, Oct. 1852, 550, and July 1856, 386-8; Leeds Intelligencer 28 June 1827; Leeds Mercury, 1 Apr. 1856; Yorkshire Post 15 July 1873. Johnson, item 999; GRO death cert, Will, Borthwick Institute, 241/128) AA