Talk:Thomas Newman
From the travel notes of Tom Newman, 9 October 2018:
Just arrived Paris with better WiFi and a few minutes to spare while Jo plans our social and gastronomic life for the next few days.
Forgive me if I repeat previous notes or state the obvious.
As I see the implication of this church plaque, there is missing documentation . The Thomas Newman who is the earliest ancestor we know of was born in 1789. If he is the son of “Mr Newman of Barwick” who put up this Memorial for his parents we would extend the family tree two generations further into the 1700s. I hope Lois or Michael might rise to the challenge of searching for that documentation.
Barwick is a neighborhood of Yeovil now, (near the Yeovil Junction train station if that helps. I know nothing more about Barwick or if there is a church around there, though it seems unlikely.) it seems a reasonable guess that Mr Newman is of our family, but since Yeovil is a much bigger town than East Chinnock or any of the hamlets around there, it is not more than a guess.
What we do know is that John and Mary newman had three children of which we know the names of two, Mary and William . John and Mary were dead in 1790 or before, and they lived in Yeovil and were buried in that church’s graveyard, Church of St John.
It should be possible to find records of John and Mary, sometime 1700s and death records of their two known children, and hopefully the full name of the Barwick Newman and from there the link to Thomas. (It’s also possible Thomas is the son of William though given the interval between Thomas’s birth and the latest date of William’s death, somewhat unlikely.) Church records are in Taunton, I was told. I should have asked for more specifics, and I still could. I surmise the district church HQ is in Taunton .
The graves were all moved as the town population grew, church staff saying outbreaks of cholera were blamed on the burial site, which the topography might support. Staff were unsure exactly when. The headstones were not moved to the Yeovil cemetery (though the staff said they were) and have disappeared. I went and found there only a small marker for the whole reinterment. It was barely legible but had no individual names. This was possibly a century old, not earlier, according to cemetery staff, who told me that was all there was to indicate any remains had been moved; they knew of no headstones there from the mid 1800s or earlier, or even if that story was true. Their records only go back to 1920. There is a separate crematorium nearby which they suggested might have earlier records. (I rather doubt that it would go much further back.) There are a handful of old headstones still in the Yeovil churchyard but none of any interest. It’s possible the graves were moved elsewhere in the period before 1920. It’s also possible they were moved there but the records, if any, are in Taunton. Or, since the headstones are lost, those responsible had good reason to ditch the records—the whole affair of relocating the remains to some mass grave seems rather tawdry. I also visited the East Chinnock church and looked at all the headstones. Nothing helpful.
— Tom Newman, 9 October 2018