The Four Hughs
This historic photograph taken on Boxing Day 1910, shows four generations of Newman, each bearing the name Hugh whose lives span a period of a century and a half. The first Newman of our family to be given this name was Hugh Newman (1689-1746), a bricklayer and builder of Epsom. The name passed to several cousins and nephews, who took pride in his success, and provides a link between the family before and after its move to London.
The bearded Hugh Thomas Newman (1828-1913) was the third son of Samuel Hugh and Elizabeth Myres (nee Potter) Newman, was born at the Borough, Southwark. He was only two year’s old when his great-aunt, Elizabeth Ann Newman, died, but she had directed her executors to invest £20 in Parliamentary Stocks to be applied for the purpose of apprenticing him “to any business but that of cardmaking when he shall attain the age of fourteen”. The conditions attached to this bequest suggested some measure of disapproval of Samuel Hugh’s trade, possibly because of its association with gambling. Accordingly, when he was fifteen year’s old Hugh Thomas was apprenticed for a period of seven years to George Collar of Wych Street, Strand, to be taught “the trades or businesses of Locksmith and a Bellhanger” although he later earned his living as a whitesmith.
His eldest son, Hugh John Newman (1850-1932) became a deacon in the Catholic Apostolic Church, a nineteenth century religious movement and lived in the clergy house attached to their church in Mare Street, Hackney, which is now a Greek Orthodox Church. His eldest son, Hugh James Newman (1874-1954) was an Underdeacon in the same church but employed to look after the Church in Wood Green, in North London.
The five year old boy, Hugh George (1905-1979) later adopted the surname de Willmott Newman and was ordained priest in an Old Catholic Church which later united with the Orthodox Church. When he was 39 he was elected and consecrated as a bishop with the title of Metropolitan of Glastonbury, a reference to the historic links of early Christianity in Britain and its close association with the Christian East. Descendants of the Newman family have been chief bishops of the British Orthodox Church since 1944.
