Extract from letter to Marie from family at 'Fisher Street, Nr. Faversham,Kent ME13CLB dated 28th September 1976.

"I got a letter about a fortnight ago from a woman living in Co. Wexford, who had just been on a visit to England seen the name Neame in the paper. She wrote and said that she had spent all her sixty years in a hamlet called Neamestown, near Kilmore, and never in her half century heard the name Neame as a family name still in use: and would I write and tell her about it. So I replied and said that I thought Neamestown must have been someone's house or farm in the 19th Century. To which she replied very quickly and quite indignantly that I was absolutely wrong and that the Neames had gone to ireland in 1170 in the first Norman invasion of Wexford and had settled there in two different places: Gorey and Neamestown, and that the invaders were constituted of Normans, Flemmings, Welsh and Devon-men. However, although Hutlertown is till lived in my Butlers and Furlonstown still lived in by Furlons (all belonging to the same invasion force), Neamestown hadn't had any Neames for time out of mind.

Isn't that fascinating? So you can imagine, I have been writing all over Ireland trying to find someone who can give me some accurate information on the 12th-15th Century. This would perfectly explain why there seem to be no Neames in kent before 1450. And it is ineresting to note that the principal export from Wexford to ngland during the period was hides, and that the first Kentish Neame was a tanner and shipper (perhaps of the hides he tanned). I think he must have come from Ireland to control the English end of the trade. I am hoping to trace the Neame crest, but of fourse if they were originally "mercenaries" and soldiers, they would have had a coat of arms as a matter of course.

Copied from the Neamefamily.com website:

http://www.neamefamily.com/tree/getperson.php?personID=I79&tree=neame