As much of the countryside between Middlesbrough and Whitby seems to have been designated the “Captain Cook Heritage Trail” we decided that our own travels this week constituted the Joseph Potter Heritage Trail. We had a full and rewarding time with excellent weather and I’m sure that John and Marion will both have something to say about their impressions.
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News posted today by Seraphim Newman-Norton that the tour around Yorkshire will begin next Tuesday
Next week, John Townsend (Hereford), Marion Sumpter (Falmouth) and I will be visiting sites in North Yorkshire associated with Joseph Potter. We will be staying just outside Middlesborough but plan to visit Stokesley in Cleveland, where Joseph was born in 1769; Great Ayton, where he lived with his aunt and uncle and attended school; and Whitby, where he first went to sea in 1788. Armed with his own account of these early years, we hope to understand how the local landscape influenced this ancestor’s choices. Although much will have changed in the intervening 240 years, we hope there will be sufficient “footprints” to guide us time travellers. Watch this space, as we shall report back on our potterings in the North !
Keep an eye out for new photos and information when available on our forums, fingers crossed for new discoveries and an insight on Joseph Potters birth place.
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
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This week I visited Hayles Street, formerly Gibraltar Row. There is a late Victorian pub on the corner and one likes to feel that it is the successor of the Sign of the Castle where the inquest on Hugh Newman was held.
The street is now quite mixed with some late Victorian houses. There is also one terrace of brick houses on the west side called “Hayles Terrace” and dated 1853. Further down on the same side are some very plain brick houses which could date from around 1816 or any time up to the 1850s. In my opinion this could be the original Gibraltar Row as it is a single row of modest dwellings and therefore the earliest houses in the street. They could date from a few decades later but it would be unlikely that the earlier houses should be pulled down in the 1840s or 1850s only to be replaced by something almost identical. At the north end of this row is a recess called Fives Court (visible by the lamp post and blue sign on the wall in both photos), which leads into a serpentine passageway (with some old brick walls) which leads directly in East Place, West Square where we know that Hugh Newman’s nephew, Samuel Hugh Newman was living 1838-184. Knowing that the Newmans usually lived in very close proximity to one another, I think this is another confirmation that these houses constitute at least part of the original Gibraltar Row.
The fact that the Leedle household was at 24, Gibraltar Row suggests there were more houses than at present but I would venture the opinion that the ones in my photograph are from the original row, so that we can know what sort of house No. 24 would have been, even if we can no longer identify it (the numbers having been changed to accommodate the new houses).
Sometime it might be worth checking the 1841 & 1851 Census to see if one can ascertain anything about the increase in the number of houses in this decade.
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