THE NEWTON FAMILY HISTORY

Interesting stuff added to this site:

OK - so I've been a little slack. I still work for a living you know, and the clients won't leave me alone. Be assured that I continue to beaver away when time permits gathering pics and information about the Newton dynasty. I will start sharing a stack of new information over the next 12 months, because now that I have all the family photo files together, I can now put them into some kind of logical sequence.

I'm also starting a new section as of today (Dec 2009), with copies of all the great documents I have accumulated over the years. To make it easier to wade through, I will have a section called DOCUMENTS, and this will be broken into categories, such as marriage, births, deaths, press notices and the like. What I will probably do is group them together so that in one section, you will find a person's birth certificate, marriage certificate and death certificate, together with pics of them and press notices of any kind of their various ceremonies. This service will begin in February 2010.

In the meantime, whet your appetite with this little gem, the marriage certificate of James and Frances, who are the ones who started our Newton dynasty in Australia. (Click here to see the certificate)

The Newton family Matriarch, Stella Newton, died in early July 2007, just three weeks before her 104th birthday, which would have been on 24 July 2007. Here's the story in the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin.
(CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A JPEG IMAGE OF THE PAGE)
(CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A PDF OF THE EULOGY WHICH HER NEPHEW KEN DELIVERED AT THE SMALL FUNERAL SERVICE)
Ivy Newton (husband Gilbert Horace - son of John Thomas Newton and Elizabeth Ann Nash) celebrated her 90th Birthday in Rockhampton with family and friends on 7 October 2006, and died on 17 February 2007. For her birthday I produced this DVD which was played at the party.
(CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A PDF OF HER EULOGY, DELIVERED BY HER SON KEN ON BEHALF OF BROTHER ED AND THE FAMILY)

MOVIES

Only for those with ADSL or cable connection to the internet. Be patient. Click on the camera for the show.

Ivy Newton 90th Birthday

Stella Newton 50th Anniversary with Walter Reid & Co 16mm film newsclip discovered after her death

Gilbert Newton 80th Birthday April 1992

Introduction to the Newton family history -
first written in September 2003
and updated from time to time as new evidence comes to light

Like all families, the Newtons had their share of intrigues, black sheep, characters and prudes. Despite the fact that some family members considered that certain events were un-newsworthy, I took the view that for a history to be credible, it should contain all - as long as it's factual and does no-one today any real harm.

Over 30 or 40 years, I've spend countless hours and a small fortune buying certificates, books and records.

I travelled to England in 1988 and was successful in discovering the family's roots - notably the headstone of Thomas Newton of Ashton Under Lyne / Dukinfield, the father of James Newton, blacksmith and wheelright, who began our Newton line in Australia. (That's me at my Great-Great-Grandfather's headstone in the old Dukinfield cemetery) My living sources of information are now all gone. My father, a storehouse of a great deal of family knowledge, Gilbert Newton of Rockhampton is now 95 and regrettably suffers dimentia, although his health is still good. My mother, Ivy Newton died in February 2007. My aunt Elsie died at the age of 105 in Rockhampton and I have all her photographs. Family matriarch Stella Newton died in July 2007, and I have all her photographs also. My current mission is to digitise all photographs and eventually there will be a full album on this site, for sharing with all family members. There is a whole generational change occurring, with new family members being born everywhere and quite frankly, I can't keep up with them all. This website therefore will hopefully serve as a resource centre for the Newton family which descended from James and his wife Frances, of Rockhampton and Mt Morgan.

It was Stella Newton who actually started me on this journey some 40 or more years ago, with snippets of information which I have never forgotten.

Family histories of course never end, meaning that they are on on-going process, constantly in states of revision as new information comes to hand. In the early 1990s, I wrote a first draft of an extensive family history, which I now have to re-invent for the internet. It will take a while.

I will put up new pages as I finish them (in my spare time, which isn't all that much between work and home). I don't think you will be disappointed by your early visits, but keep coming back, because this website constantly changes and updates.

I will try to keep you informed of new information on this page, every time I upload. Links to further pages are listed below.

Your feedback is vital to this process, so please feel free to email any information you like. Just click this link to do so [email protected]

For those who know them, there are links to a couple of trial photo albums below. I now have new software which will allow me to store many pictures, all with captions, so that visitors can browse at their leisure. All new albums will be uploaded before the end of 2007, so keep returning.

Regards to all

Ken Newton

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE BEGINNINGS - BACK IN THE OLD COUNTRY

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE GREAT MIGRATION MYSTERY

A TRIAL ONLY OF A PICTURE PAGE DEVOTED TO MY AUNT DOROTHY, Daughter of John Thomas Newton

A TRIAL ONLY OF A PICTURE PAGE DEVOTED TO MY AUNT STELLA, Daughter of John Thomas Newton