Needham Family Site
This site provides basic genealogy data, information and family trees on the Needham's. What you will find is Baptism, Burial & Marriage data for nearly 100 parishes spread across 9 counties, information from over 300 wills , memorial data, tax records dating back to 13th century, apprentice records and much much more, In addition all this data has been put into trees and there are over 100 both large and small. So if you're looking for Needham's you'll want to look at and use this site. The information is easy to find and free to use.. The data will become progressively available over the next few years. So why not start by Touring the site .
Interesting Stories
There are a few famous Needhams but littered through the site there are interesting stories about an increasing number. These include
- a Family that moved to Sheffield and whose sons utilised two of the most iconic brand names in Sheffield Cutlery: The Needham Cutlery Dynasty
The size of the Study
How many Needham's do you know? In 2002 there were 10886 Needham's in England and Wales and the surname is the 698 most frequent. When a surname hits 10000 it is considered to be frequent.
So how big would the study be and where to start? Ancestry has one of the largest data bases and of England & Wales records. There are 324646 (Oct 2017) records of Needham's with 82819 births, 52104 marriages and 48237 deaths. There is only one conlusion. the size of the study is large, so where to start? The choice wasobvious. Derbyshire, the place the Needham's originated (my view – see Origins), and work out from there ie Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire etc following the distribution of Needham's – see Distribution. And this is only he UK.
Aims
Currently, the study is focused on being the 'go to place' for Needham's providing resources, data and information that allowsothers to study their Needham family lines. This is combined with the second goal of trying to show that all Needham's originate from oneplace - High Needham. Finally if you would like to share your Needham family tree then the site would welcome any help that you are willing to offer
Sharing
You are welcome to use the information on the site (see privacy policy) but like everything there will be errors and some of the assumptions made and logic used can be questioned. If you find something amiss or you are willing to add to the information in the site then please contact me. Plus if you would like to put your Needham family tree on the site
Blog & Twitter
You can follow the daily workflow if you are sad enough on the Needham ONS Blog or on Twitter @NeedhamONS
One Name Study
This work is registered with the Guild of One Name Studies. A one-name (or surname) study is a project researching all occurrences of a surname, as opposed to a particular pedigree (ancestors of one person) or descendancy (descendants of one person or couple). Its aim is to research the genealogy and family history of all persons with a given surname and its linked variants. The site started by concentrating studies on Needham's from Derbyshire and South Yorkshire and has subsequently moved into other regions in the UK. It is a big task. If anyone is prepared to help with aspects of the study please contact the administrator.
Acknowledgements
There are many people I must thank in particular my wife who puts up with my obsession. Helen Nedham I am very grateful for providing most of the data used in the base family tree, Alastair Lack for providing the impetus and Robert Sterry for advice on establishing and building a website. In addition, there is now a very large number of people who have been very generous with their time and knowledge. I've tried to acknowledge those people or organisations whose work I have used on the relevant site page; if I have been insufficiently accurate my apologises and please contact me.
