hewitt.co

The family name

The Hewitts

Little Hugh, or a clearing in the woods: the Hewitt name has two old English roots, a long history in England and Ulster, and a good many people who carried it somewhere worth remembering. This is the family's home on the web.

“Be just and fear not.”Motto of the Viscounts Lifford, who bore the arms shown here

Watercolor of a heraldic shield: a red field with a silver chevron with scalloped edges between three silver owls. Above it, on a twisted red and silver wreath, an owl stands on a tree stump from which one leafy branch grows. A blank ribbon scroll sits below.

The name

Where “Hewitt” comes from

  • “Little Hugh.” Hewitt grew from the medieval personal names Hewet, Huet and Hughet, pet forms of Hugh, a name the Normans made popular in England. The -et ending is the French diminutive.1
  • A clearing in the woods. Some Hewitts take their name from places instead: Hewitts in Chelsfield and Hewitts in Willesborough, both in Kent, named from the Old English hīewett, “a cutting”, a place where trees had been cut down.1
  • Old records. The name appears in English records from the Middle Ages: a Robert Hughet in the Writs of Parliament in 1313, and Huets and Hewets in county records of the 1300s.2
  • England and Ulster. Most Hewitts today live in England, but the name is densest in Northern Ireland, where about one person in 1,500 carries it.2
  • North America. By the 1840 United States census, New York held more Hewitt families than any other state, about a third of them.1 Some 39,000 Hewitts live in the United States today and about 6,600 in Canada.2
Watercolor of a woodland clearing in Kent: felled stumps and a stack of cut logs in the foreground, an owl resting on one stump, and a figure carrying a bundle of branches along a path toward a timber-framed cottage.
A hīewett: a clearing where trees have been cut, the older meaning behind some Hewitt place names.

The arms

Three owls and a scalloped chevron

The arms most associated with the Hewitt name were borne by James Hewitt, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, who was made Baron Lifford in 1768 and Viscount Lifford in 1781. The Hewet baronets of Headley Hall, created in 1621, bore almost the same design.3, 4

Arms
Gules, a chevron engrailed between three owls argent.A red shield, a silver chevron with scalloped edges, and three silver owls.
Crest
On a stump of a tree, with one branch growing thereon, an owl, proper.An owl in its natural colours on a tree stump sprouting a single branch.
Motto
Be just and fear not.Shown beneath the arms on the engraved portrait of the first Viscount.5

A coat of arms belongs to a person and their descendants, not to everyone who shares a surname. These are the arms historically associated with the Hewitt name, borne by the Viscounts Lifford; the painting here is a family keepsake, not a grant of arms.6

Notable Hewitts

A few who carried the name far

James Hewitt, 1st Viscount Lifford

c. 1712–1789 · English-born, served in Ireland

Lord Chancellor of Ireland for twenty-two years, from 1767 to 1789, the longest tenure of the 18th century.7

Abram Stevens Hewitt

1822–1903 · American

Ironmaker and Mayor of New York City (1887–88) who set in motion the public financing that built the city's subway.8

Sarah and Eleanor Hewitt

1859–1930 and 1864–1924 · American

Sisters who founded a museum of decorative arts in 1897, now Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum: the first museum in the United States founded by women.9

Peter Cooper Hewitt

1861–1921 · American

Electrical engineer, brother of Sarah and Eleanor, who invented the mercury-vapour lamp, first marketed in 1901, and the mercury rectifier.10

Foster Hewitt

1902–1985 · Canadian

The voice of Hockey Night in Canada for generations of listeners, and the man who first called “He shoots, he scores!” Appointed to the Order of Canada in 1972.11

John Hewitt

1907–1987 · Northern Irish

Belfast poet and champion of Ulster regionalism, made a freeman of the city of Belfast in 1983.12

Edwin Hewitt

1920–1999 · American

Mathematician at the University of Washington, co-discoverer of the Hewitt–Savage zero–one law and co-author of Abstract Harmonic Analysis.13

Don Hewitt

1922–2009 · American

Television producer who directed the first televised presidential debate in 1960 and created 60 Minutes in 1968.14

Carl Hewitt

1944–2022 · American

MIT computer scientist who created the Actor model of concurrent computation in 1973, and the Planner programming language.15

Angela Hewitt

born 1958 · Canadian

Ottawa-born pianist and one of the leading Bach interpreters of her generation; Companion of the Order of Canada.16

Lleyton Hewitt

born 1981 · Australian

Became the world's No. 1 men's tennis player at 20 in 2001, won the US Open that year and Wimbledon in 2002; International Tennis Hall of Fame, 2021.17

The family today

Hewitts on the web

A few places where members of the family share their work.

Hannah K Photography → Mark S. Hewitt's books, Nations of Light →

Sources

  1. Dictionary of American Family Names, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2022), “Hewitt”, via Ancestry.
  2. Forebears: Hewitt surname.
  3. Debrett's Illustrated Peerage, “Lifford”.
  4. Hewet baronets (citing Burke's Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies, 1844).
  5. National Trust Collections: engraved portrait of James Hewitt, Viscount Lifford.
  6. Legacy Tree Genealogists: the “family coat of arms”.
  7. Dictionary of Irish Biography: James Hewitt.
  8. Britannica: Abram S. Hewitt; NYC Municipal Archives.
  9. Smithsonian Libraries: the Hewitt sisters; Smithsonian Magazine.
  10. National Museum of American History: Peter Cooper Hewitt.
  11. The Canadian Encyclopedia: Foster Hewitt.
  12. Dictionary of Irish Biography: John Hewitt.
  13. MacTutor History of Mathematics: Edwin Hewitt.
  14. CBS News: Don Hewitt.
  15. Santa Cruz Sentinel obituary: Carl Hewitt.
  16. The Canadian Encyclopedia: Angela Hewitt.
  17. International Tennis Hall of Fame: Lleyton Hewitt.