Newsham

This interesting surname is of English locational origin from any of the several places thus called, for example, in Lancashire, Lincolnshire, the North Riding of Yorkshire, and the East Riding of Yorkshire, recorded respectively in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Neuhuse", "Neuhuse", "Newehusum" and "Neuhuse". The placename derives from a contracted form of the Olde English pre 7th Century "neowan husum" meaning "(at the) new houses". During the Middle Ages when migration for the purpose of job-seeking was becoming more common, people often took their former village name as a means of identification, thus resulting in a wide dispersal of the name. The surname is first recorded in the late 12th Century (see below). One Robert de Neusom is noted in the Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield, Yorkshire (1275). In the modern idiom the surname has many variant spellings ranging from Newsam, Newsom, Newsome and Newsum to Newsholme. On July 2nd 1628, Margaret, daughter of Thomas and Anne Newsham, was christened at the Church of St. Bartholomew the Less, London. A Coat of Arms granted to the family is blue, on a silver fess three red crosses crosslet, the Crest being a gold boar's head erased, charged on the cheek with a red crosslet. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Robert de Neusum, which was dated 1195, in the "Pipe Rolls of Yorkshire", during the reign of King Richard 1st, known as "Richard the Lionheart", 1189 - 1199. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.