Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Elkins WETHERILL
By Walter F. Naedele
Inquirer Staff Writer
In September 1983, Elkins Wetherill was vice chairman for a weekend family reunion.
The reunion needed a vice chairman because, it was reported, 400 relatives gathered in Audubon, Montgomery County, to mark the Wetherill family's 300th anniversary.
They honored the first immigrant Wetherill, Christopher, a Yorkshire native who settled in Burlington County in 1683.
By 1983, Elkins Wetherill had made his mark, too.
On Thursday, Aug. 11, Mr. Wetherill, 91, president of the former Philadelphia Stock Exchange from 1965 to 1981, died at his summer home in Waldoboro, Maine. He lived in Plymouth Meeting.
Among his accomplishments, Mr. Wetherill headed the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, and the Philadelphia Drama Guild.
Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Wetherill graduated from St. George's School near Newport, R.I., and interrupted his studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 1941 to serve with the First City Troop during World War II.
He returned to Penn in 1945 and graduated from its law school in 1948.
Mr. Wetherill's daughter, Alexandra Gerry, said that after working for a Philadelphia law firm, he was a solicitor for Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor from 1951 to 1955.
In 1955, she said, he was a founding member of the Norristown law firm Henderson, Wetherill, O'Hey & Horsey, where he was a partner until 1998.
Mr. Wetherill was Montgomery County treasurer from 1956 to 1959, head of the Montgomery County commissioners from 1960 to 1963, and chairman of the Pennsylvania Securities Commission from 1963 to 1965.
His daughter said he served three terms as chairman of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, in 1968-69, 1970-71, and 1978-79.
Board chairman of WHYY Inc. from 1970 to 1976 and a director there from 1976 to 1990, he also was board chairman of the Drama Guild from 1975 to 1980 and a director there from 1980 to 1987.
In 1996, he sold to Montgomery County a piece of his Plymouth Meeting farm, which became Harriet Wetherill Park to honor his late wife.
He was chairman of the Montgomery County Open Space Board from 1993 until earlier this year and was the author of A Field Guide to Some of the Common Grasses of Southeastern Pennsylvania, published by the Brandywine Conservancy.
He was a trustee from 1973 to 1991 of Davis and Elkins College in Elkins, W.Va., and was a board member for, among others, St. Christopher's Hospital for Children and the Committee of Seventy.
Besides his daughter, Mr. Wetherill is survived by his wife, Ethel; sons Elkins Jr. and Stephen; stepsons Edwin, Horace, and Alexander Nalle; stepdaughters Ellen Hass and Lucy Weed; seven grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; and 14 step-grandchildren. His first wife, Harriet, died in 1994.
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