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In 2008 I realised that my history was already being superseded by new discoveries and a random message left on Ancestry.co.uk brought a rapid response from the first of many kinsmen who shared my enthusiasm for our family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
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.
We here at A Newman Family History are pushing snippets of our website daily, however did you know we are constantly updating the articles and photo gallery.
Joseph Potter was not only an important link between the older generation of Newmans and their later descendants, but also a remarkable character himself.