A Newman Family History

Progress on preparing the text for the book is moving steadily. It is effectively complete but I am still tweaking sections, adding new information and trying to sort out the illustrations. Monty Newman in Australia and I have had a couple of profitable face-to-face exchanges on Skype; Marion Sumpter is carefully proof reading chapter by chapter and Adam Livick-Newman has promised to come and see me before the month is out.

As you will see from the attached photo, I have pretty regular assistance from Gregory, my Aquatic Armenian cat from Lake Van, whose pedigree is almost as long as the Newmans. My desk, is piled high with files, photos and books, all needed for navigating through the growing branches of the family tree. The word count currently stands at 61,000 words.

The idea that one has somehow reached an end point is just not tenable as most days bring something new. Yesterday’s post brought revealed the discovery of a previously unknown document referring to our remotest ancestor, Robert Newman the elder; whilst today’s post delivered three more BMD certificates, not to mention emails !

Todays new extract from the Newman family history website comes from the Joseph Potter section

Joseph Potter recalls an uncle who made his fortune in eighteenth century London as a diamond cutter as well as two of Joseph’s half-brothers who inherited his wealth.

In his Memoirs, recalling the year 1792, Joseph Potter writes:

“We arrived safe in the River Thames and moor’d her abreast of the Tower of London. It came into my mind concerning a rich uncle I had in London which I had never seen, likewise two of my father’s oldest sons of his first wife’s children, Thomas and Ralph Potter …… He died possessed of about one hundred thousand pounds besides all Bell Alley, Coleman Street, belonged to him. He died when I was an infant and my mother alive, but Thomas and Ralph never once wrote to acquaint my mother with his death as the two shared the effects between them….”

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Please check back for more updates and new discoveries posted daily.

Joseph Potter was not only an important link between the older generation of Newmans and their later descendants, but also a remarkable character himself.

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The story of nations is composed of millions of personal family histories and the launch of this Newman Family History website, following only a couple of weeks after the opening of our dedicated Forum, is a further step towards making the research on this particular Newman Family available online to all those with interested. At the present we are anticipating the detailed research in book form to be ready for the printers by the end of May, so we planning a June publication date.

This will be a significant step in almost half a century of gathering material relating to this family. Now seems to be an appropriate occasion to pay tribute to two of my kinsmen, whom sadly I never met, but whose work – quite independent of my own – will have been brought to completion. Bertha Voysey (1915-1996) and Leonard Townsend (1915-2001) were first cousins, whose mothers were two daughters of Thomas George Newman (1840-1933). Following their respective retirements, they embarked on their genealogical adventure, Bertha having the advantage of living close to the National Archives at Kew but Leonard making good use of early computerisation to collate data. Through their efforts much material has been preserved which otherwise would almost certainly have been lost.

The website will continue to be updated and, through its Forum, we intend to continue the task of unravelling and recording one family’s past.
Full can be found at http://newmanfamilyhistory.com
Visit our community forums at http://newmanfamilyhistory.com/forums

It gives me great pleasure to declare this Newman Family History Forum open and to welcome friends and kinsmen concerned to trace, preserve and record events relating to our progenitors.

As the founder of this website and author of the first published history of our family, “A Victorian Family: The origins and subsequent history of the family of Hugh John Newman” in 2006, I should explain why we have thought it desirable to erect this site and the purposes to which I hope it will be put.

My interest in family history began when I was a schoolboy, probably around 1961. Fortunately at that time my grandparents were still alive and several great uncles and aunts who remembered their grandparents and had anecdotes and verbal family tradition stretching back to the Regency period. As they died off and their effects were scattered, I began collecting family memorabilia: photographs, letters, pages from the family Bible and memorial cards, which otherwise would have been lost or made little sense to later generations.

Periodically, when I had spare time, I indulged my genealogical interests and tracked down further information from parish registers or in various public archives. It was this information which I used to compile my “Victorian Family.”
In a few short years, however, the widespread use of the internet has transformed the picture and made available resources previously scattered over many places, complete with search-engine facilities which can now retrieve data in minutes rather than requiring fruitless hours of trawling through records. The advent of the 1901 census online and the huge teething problems experienced with accessing it, was followed in rapid succession by making accessible online all the census returns from 1841. The publications of the 1911 census before the expiration of a full century is another wonderful boon to family history researchers.

In 2008 I realised that my history was already being superseded by new discoveries and a random message left on Ancestry.co.uk brought a rapid response from the first of many kinsmen who shared my enthusiasm for our family history, which has since continued to grow as others joined us. With their support and generosity in sharing their skills and their own precious resources, combined with a passion for research, we have made a formidable team and new discoveries have come thick and fast. The key to this success is simply collaboration and it is in this spirit that this website is launched.

The projected new family history, which we are hoping to have ready for the printer by May, is far more than a new edition. Although it contains the core of the earlier history, at approximately 55,000 words it is five times larger and includes the earlier history, chronicling events before the Newmans moved to London in about 1784. Apart from sharing our common heritage it is hoped that the launch of the book and its associated website will widen the net to link even more descendants of our particular family of Newmans. Hopefully, through these contacts and further internet resources (especially the London Metropolitan Archives) coming online, there will be a need for a subsequent edition before too long !

Thank you for visiting and I hope to see you in the forums soon.

Full site coming soon at http://newmanfamilyhistory.com/
Visit our community at http://newmanfamilyhistory.com/forums/
From Sylvan Surrey to Babylon – The Newman Family of Dorking, Epsom and London: Book due out at the end of May 2009