Source: Michael Doyle Their Name Liveth For Evermore: The Great War Roll of Honour for Leicestershire and Rutland.
He was the son of John Durnford Ryall, Customs and Excise 1st Class Officer, born 1872 at Northleach, Gloucestershire, and his wife Miriam, born 1873 in the United States of America. John Durnford was born in 1900 in Stow on the Wold, Gloucestershire. He had one sibling, Mary, born 1909 in Bilston, Staffordshire. At the time of the 1911 Census the family were residing at 8, Swan Bank, Bilston, Staffordshire. On the 31st January 1920 the Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester published a Roll of Honour in which John is shown to have been a pupil at the school between the years 1915 and 1916.