Newman, William (Stanton)

Gender: Male

The folk song collector and musician, Percy Grainger, noted in a letter to his Danish girlfriend on 18 November 1907: ‘Mother and I stayed with a dear old maid, Miss (Eliza) Wedgwood (at The Bank, Stanton) …in the afternoon 4 men came there to her house and 2 of them were good; and give me hope about the district.’ These were William Newman and John Collett. On 17 November 1907 William Newman sang The Farmer’s Boy, The Saucy Sailor and Where You Going To, My Pretty Maid to Percy Grainger. This was probably William George Newman below.

A William Newman sang The Outlandish Knight to James Madison Carpenter at Stanway between 1927 and 1935. This was probably William Arthur Newman, the son of the William Newman collected by Grainger as there were no other William Newmans living in Stanway in the 1901 or 1911 censuses and the family were still living in Stanway in 1941.

William Newman married Kezia Dyer in the second quarter of 1869 in the Winchcombe registration district which included Stanway. Their son, named William George Newman, was baptised on 6 June 1869 in Stanway. By 1871 they were living with Kezia’s parents, John and Mary Dyer, in Stanway where William and John were both working as labourers, with two children, William George and Ann born about 1871. By 1881 William and Kezia were living in a cottage in Stanway where William was working as an assistant gardener. Kezia’s father was a widower living with them and described as previously employed in forests. They had three more children, John born about 1872, Raymond born about 1877 and Mary born about 1880. A further daughter, Flora, followed in about 1884 and shortly after that William died. Kezia remarried to William Stratford, a labourer of Church Stanway in 1889 in Stanway. In 1891 Kezia and William Stratford were living in a cottage in Stanway where William was working as a general labourer. Kezia’s children, including William George, were living with them and they had a daughter of their own, Minnie Stratford, born in 1891.

William George married Ellen Childs from Upper Sapey in Herefordshire, the daughter of a roadman, on 8 January 1895. In 1901 they were living in Stanway with three children, Ellen A. Newman born about 1897, Florence Audrey Newman born about 1898 and William Arthur Newman born about 1900 where William George was working as a cattleman on a farm. They also had a lodger who was a gamekeeper. In 1911 they were still living in Church Stanway. Florence had left home. William was working as a stone quarryman and they had a different lodger. William George Newman died and was buried in Stanway on 10 December 1941.

William George Newman’s son, William Arthur Newman, died and was buried in Stanway on 4 September 1953. William George Newman’s daughter, Florence Audrey Newman, married Donald Munro Grant, a police constable from Ayr, on 12 August 1921 when her stepsister, Minnie Kezia Stratford, was a witness and her father was described as a forester. On 30 November 1957 the collector Brian Ballinger visited Albert Newman who was living in Tiltup Cottage, Southrop, and was in his 50s who said that he remembered his father being collected by Alfred Williams.

Notes by Carol Davies June 2015