Newport Past
William Witham
This section of the website is still under construction. We’ve chosen to make it live as we build it in the hope that readers may be able to help fill in the gaps or correct any errors.
William Witham was born in 1787, during the middle years of King George III’s reign — one of the most transformative periods in British history. In 1799 he was apprenticed to Henry Bell, an attorney of Gray’s Inn, Middlesex. Three years later, in 1802, he began his articles of clerkship at Gray’s Inn, where his father (also William) was practising as a solicitor.
The next firm marker in William’s life comes in 1812, when he married Frances Brooks, daughter of a brewer and innkeeper from Henley-on-Thames. By the following year the couple had moved to Newport, where the letters suggest they also had a baby. We have yet to discover what brought William to the area; the only trace of his presence in Newport outside the letter book is a dispute with the vicar of St Woolos over an unpaid tithe of tenpence.
We had hoped to trace William’s line down to living descendants, but this proved an intriguing — if ultimately fruitless — exercise. William had two sons, Francis and Robert (the baby mentioned earlier does not appear in the records). Francis seems not to have had children. Robert, however, married his cousin Dorothy Maxwell, heir to an estate at Troqueer, Kirkcudbright, Dumfries. From this point, the family adopted the combined name Maxwell Witham — sometimes using Maxwell as a forename, sometimes as part of the surname. Robert and Dorothy had three daughters and six sons, but it appears none of them left children. Eventually the estate passed to a member of the Maxwell family, Robert Maxwell, whose descendants often took the Witham surname.
Above: a section of the Witham Family tree. This shows how the Withams were related to the Lorymers, also how William's son, Robert, married his cousin the inheritor of the Maxwell Troqueer estate.
Below a section of the Brooks family tree. This shows how William was connected (via his wife) to the Brooks family. Quite a few letters relate to the selling of the Henley Brewery and the sharing of the proceeds between William, James and Amelia.
