John Newall
1661-1719
John Newall was born at Cleobury in 1661, the son of William and Joyce Newall. His father was a shoemaker, but died at the age of 44 when John was only two. His mother remarried, and her second husband was Peter Stringer, a rather younger man, who had been born in Neen Savage. They married in 1667, just before the birth of their first child. He is noted in the Vicar’s book for the first time in 1669, living in the town of Cleobury, and paying 6 pence for himself and wife (4 pence) and house and garden (twopence). He employed a ‘hand’ but had not paid the Vicar for him, but instead had sent him some pipes. So it would seem likely that Peter Stringer was a pipemaker, and that explains why his step sons John and Thomas both became pipemakers too. In 1676, his daughter Margaret (Baldwin’s maid) cost him fourpence. Margaret was probably a daughter by Joyce’s first marriage. At this time,Peter also had some ‘herbage’ of Newall’s upper Close, which cost him a shilling tithe. By 1679, he seems to have moved out of the town to Curdale. The Vicar notes that he has not paid for his cows, at a penny a cow. At the same time he owes Stringer three shillings and two pence. In 1681, the Vicar pays him for hay and receives everything die from Peter Stringer. John Newall, his ‘son in law’ (step son in modern usage) a journeyman was not paid for, and he was to pay for himself. By 1685,Peter Stringer also had to pay for Mary Newall who was now over 16 and another step child, as well as Thomas Newall, John’s younger brother, and Joseph Stringer, the child of him and Joyce. He had 7 cows, paid for a funeral sermon, and also his man Reynolds.