The surname notebook · 17 June 1543
John and Joane, 17 June
A village wedding before the famous brewery name.
John Neame married Joane Mockett in Nonington on 17 June 1543. Their names survive together in a parish-register transcription.
They give us a couple and a date, more than three centuries before Percy joined the brewery. We do not know enough to make them the beginning of a family tree.
Ash takes us back further, to the will that provided a cow for Cristine and gravel for a road. Ordinary lives leave wonderful little things behind.
Sources & research notes · 3 records
Derivative transcription. Original register not checked. No earliest-ever surname claim or continuous pedigree is asserted.
Follow the evidence
- Nonington marriage transcript, 1543Kent Online Parish Clerks · derivative parish-register transcription · accessed 2026-10-07
- Neame Surname Meaning & Neame Family HistoryAncestry; etymology entry attributed to The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland (2016) · surname dictionary entry, secondary display · accessed 2026-10-07
- Arthur Hussey, 'Ash Wills', Archaeologia Cantiana, vol. 36Kent Archaeological Society · Edited will transcription · accessed 2026-10-08