* James Mewburn (c1680-1731) was Steward at Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland (today a National Trust property) and was in charge there at the time the present Hall was built for Admiral Delaval to the designs of Vanbrugh.

* James's grandson Simon (1748-1834) inherited Acomb House near Hexham, Northumberland via his mother. The house remained with that line of the family for 280 years.

* Tulip Mewburn (1755-c1845) boasts the most distinctive name (in fact his mother's family name) and a colourful life. A member of the Acomb line, he was apprenticed as a draper, married his master's daughter and ran his drapery business in Newcastle from about 1788. A little later he was listed in the medical Directory as a surgeon practicing at Newcastle hospital (with luck that was an error and it was a cousin, Henry who really was a surgeon) and by 1795 had become a brandy merchant. By 1797 he was declared bankrupt. In 1813, two years after his first wife died and by now a labourer, he married 22-year old Elizabeth Armstrong at Gretna Green and had some 9 children by her (the first marriage had been childless).

* Francis Mewburn (1748-1833) became a successful apothecary/surgeon in County Durham and later inherited a small estate at Danby, North Yorkshire from a distant cousin.

* Francis Mewburn's eldest son, Francis (1785-1867), became a solicitor in Darlington and built up one of the most successful practices in the north-east. He has gained fame as the 'first railway solicitor'. Francis wrote the parliamentary bill, and steered its passage through Parliament, to allow the building of the Stockton and Darlington railway. Without him the development of rail transport might not have succeeded as it did and the transformation of Victorian society and the British and world economies might have followed some different course. Francis was also Chief Bailiff (effectively the mayor) of Darlington for many years.

* Francis Mewburn's second son, Dr John Mewburn (1788-1864), was part of a dynasty of six generations of medical practitioners. He emigrated with his family to Canada in 1832. Most of today's Canadian Mewburns are descended from him. They include: Frank Hamilton Mewburn (1858-1929), Canada's first Professor of orthopaedic surgery; General Sydney Chilton Mewburn (1863-1956) a barrister, Privy Councillor and Canadian Cabinet Minister in charge of WW1 wartime defence resourcing.

* A few Mewburns have lived in London since the 16th century. The most distinguished has been John Mewburn (1762-1830) a notable, and still collectable, silversmith and Liveryman of the Goldsmiths' Company and his son Barak another fine maker. Their histories have been published in The Journal of Genealogy and Family History, see DoI http://dx.doi.org/10.24240/23992964.2017.030101.

* Joshua Mewburn, of the silversmith line,lived as a Maori for over twenty years from 1833 - a very early New Zealand settler. His history has been published in The Journal of Genealogy and Family History, see DoI http://dx.doi.org/10.24240/23992964.2018.1234514.

* William Mewburn (1817-1900), the grandson of a shoemaker in Stokesley, North Yorkshire and a staunch Methodist, became a stockbroker in Halifax and established a firm that was one of the founder members of the Manchester Stock Exchange. He amassed a considerable fortune - particularly by trading in railway shares - and moved to Wykham Hall near Banbury. He became a Justice of the Peace for Oxfordshire, High Sheriff in 1889, and Deputy Lieutenant for the county.

* John Clayton Mewburn (1840-1901), of the Acomb line was a patent lawyer in London and established the firm that is now Mewburn Ellis LLP, a leader in the fields of patent and trade mark law and intellectual property law.

* A George Mewburn from Skelton was transported to America in 1770. Two Mewburns were transported to Australia - John Mewburn (1810-1891) in 1830 and Robert Wilkinson Mewburn (1827-1891) in 1853.

* Remarkably, all the Meaburns in England today have their origin in Bishopton, County Durham. Even more remarkably they all descend from John Meaburn (1734-1817) the parish clerk of Bishopton.

* Another line of Meaburns originated with shipowner John Meaburn and his wife Amy Ambler at Boston, Lincolnshire in the 1770s (with an earlier origin in Sunderland). That line has died out in England but survives in the Meaburns of Tasmania.

* George Richmond Mewburn (1865-1941), of the Acomb line, played several times at Wimbledon and was Hon. Sec. of the Lawn Tennis Association.

* Alfred 'Alf' Adolphus Mewburn (1851-1901) captained the Durham county cricket team. His brothers John and Fred also played, as did his son Bowyer Bell.