John or William of Peterborough or Baston

Finally I've managed to complete the Word document of the three generations of Kisbys from John and Eleanor Kisby of Peterborough. You can open it at https://kisby.one-name.net/kisby-family-lines.htm. Awkwardly it's called N4AB, being a merging of two family trees, because at one point John Kisby (1761-1839) moved to Baston, Lincolnshire, where he was known as William Kisby. Who knows why! But fortunately one of his sons (baptised as son of William) remarries in middle age and describes his father as John Kisby, a shepherd "formerly of Baston, late of Peterborough". So as I suspected, John and William were the same person.
Somewhat controversialy for the times, James (the aforesaid son) married the widow of his brother Joseph (died 1848). James and Sarah Kisby marry by license (to avoid 'banns' announcements) in a busy town church 8 miles from where they live. Many of the family of John and Eleanor Kisby live long and apparently healthy lives. John himself lives to 78, Eleanor to 77. Eldest son William (born 1794) emigrates to Illinois, USA and is still alive in 1870. James lives to 76. Their elder sister Elizabeth lives to 86. Their younger brother Robert lives to 90.
It is Robert Kisby (1804-1894) that has descendants who carry the Kisby name into the 20th century. He marries Mary Chambers, then Harriet Chambers (who I suspect were related) and, between them, they have 12 children. His son John (1827-1904) moves to Lancashire to work in a cotton mill, hence Kisbys could be found in the Rochdale area. Robert's son James William Kisby (1846-1918) moves to Yorkshire to work in the mines. His sons move to Fulwell, County Durham, where several of their children carry the Kisby name to the present day.

Wandering around Whittlesea

I treated myself last week to a holiday in the Cambridgeshire Fens and managed to visit a few Kisby and Kisbee haunts, including Farcet, Paston, Stamford ...and Whittlesea, of course. Whittlesea was the stomping ground of my Kisby ancestors for several centuries, until local postmistress Jean Kisby died in 2002.

I didn't come across any Kisby traces while I was there, despite trawling through almost the entire town cemetery. I also managed to look around the churchyard of St Andrew's Church, one of two ancient churches in the town, and the Kisby family church in the early years of the 1800s. The gravestones in the area are carved from some sort of limestone, which literaly dissolves over time, so anything dating before the 1880s that isn't protected from the weather is now illegible.

Outside of the large Wetherspoons pub, The George, on the Market Square, Whittlesea is also probably the quietest town in the east. The manned level crossing, next to the tiny railway station, was by far the most animated spot. When I visited Whittlesea in 1995 I went into the town museum and found the woman at the counter was related to me. Nowadays, the museum is only open for a few hours every Saturday (I was there on Thursday). I guess the tranquility is a feature of the Fensflat lands disappearing into the far distance, criss-crossed by drainage ditches and watercourses.

Looking at the map when I returned to my hotel, I did notice a Kisby Farm, to the east of Whittlesea near the hamlet of Turves. This is actually the farm occupied by my distant cousin Charles Kisby and his wife Sarah, around the turn of the last century. There is also a Kisby Level Crossing, on the line towards the town of March, likely to be named after another distantly related William Kisby. So the names live on, even though the people have long departed.

Leicestershire renegades

Before the 20th century things were much more simple for everyone. A man married a woman, the woman took on the surname of her husband, children were born in wedlock (or else incur tremendous shame), often the first son would be named after the father or grandfather. And so on. Very easy indeed for 21st century genealogists like me.

Very occasionally things happened differently. Thomas Kisby (1709 - 1765) of Barnwell, Northamptonshire, made a decision to spell his surname "Kisbee" and his son, Franklin, became the source of all today's Kisbees.

A century and three generations later, Charles Kisbee (born 1845 in Barnwell) moved to Leicestershire and evidently had some problem with the letter 'e'. He changed his family name back to "Kisby". His seven surviving children were born "Kisbee" but married as "Kisby" and (for 3 of them anyway) died as "Kisby". The eldest son Charles Kisby died in very unfortunate circumstances aged only 9 years old, after he found a bottle of liquid in a farm building and drank it, only to find it contained carbolic acid.

Leicester Asylum

Charles Kisbee's second eldest son, William Kisby, married Lucy Starmer in 1901. It seems a very tragic story for Lucy. Their second daughter, also Lucy, died before her second birthday. Maybe this tipped her poor mother over the edge, because Lucy Kisby ended up as an 'inmate' in the Leicester Asylum for many years. While his wife was a psychiatric patient, William Kisby decided to grow his family with another woman, Alice Stearn, who bore five Kisby children with him out-of-wedlock. In July 1918 Lucy Kisby died of TB, still at the Asylum, finally giving the opportunity for William to marry Alice Stearn almost exactly 3 months later. Will we ever know the full story to this unusual arrangement?

Not to be outdone by William, Charles Kisby/ee's youngest child, Ada Kisby, decided to plough her own unconventional furrow as well. Ada appears to bear children to John Harbot, a Leicester shoe manufacturer. John Harbot had already been married twice, his second wife (also an Ada) very much alive during this whole time. Ada Kisby remains unmarried and dies at the ripe age of 87 in Leicester,  no doubt surrounded by her children of many surnames!!

 

Pedigree ummmm

Earlier this century I came across a copy of the "Fovargue Family Indented Pedigree" on an auction website, so am now a proud owner. My great-great grandmother Elizabeth Kisby was born a Fovargue and, when I first visited the Cambridgeshire Kisby heartlands in 1995 I bumped into a distant Fovargue relative, completely by chance. The Fovargue Family Indented Pedigree was also published in 1995, well before the days of Ancestry or Findmypast. It runs to over 150 pages listing, describoing and indexing all Fovargues from 1513 to the (then) present day. It's a mammoth work, put together in the days when you were lucky to have a word processor, let alone a computer ...or the internet.

Kisby W1A_1940

 

The Fovargue Pedigree has tempted me to try and compile something similar for the Kisbys, Kisbees and Kisbies and Kisbeys. Things will be much easier with the proliferation of online and electronic resources these days. My Kisby research comprises an ever growing mixture of genealogy programmes, spreadsheets, electronic files and some hard copy material. I've always fancied the idea of creating a book and I think it's high time I pulled everything together into a digestible format ...though I struggle with the word 'pedigree', which conjures the idea of proving good breeding with the aim of creating a pure Kisby master race!!

My inner civil servant has prevailed and I've spent the dark winter evenings drawing up Kisby families into 'indented pedigrees'. The good news is that it's helped me fill some gaps, connect some strays and generally pull things together in one place. The bad news is that the dark evenings are getting shorter, the list of chores and competing tasks is beginning to grow, and it may be 2095 before I finish. But if anyone else likes the idea and wants to offer encouragement, well, please tell me. We may find out eventually we're well enough bred to enter Crufts!

Living on the edge

One of the few advantages of the UK Covid-19 lockdowns is the availability of the Ancestry genealogy website at home, via my local library catalogue, while the libraries have been closed to the public. Instead of enjoying the longer daylight hours on long walks or exercise, I've been hunched over my computer searching through old documents.

Ancestry seem to have excellent coverage of Northamptonshire parish records, This is great for me, because the Kisby heartlands straddle the northern borders of this county, around Peterborough in particular. Unfortunately within a couple of miles are the borders of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Huntingdonshire, which mean roving Kisbys can go off the radar quickly (though radars hadn't been invented yet) by travelling only a relatively short distance.

Some of the parish register records are wonderful, filled with fascinating anecdotal detail. In one parish, the curate records the young men that have been "killed by a cart" - at least one per year! Another tells of the tragedy of the vicar's wife accidentally killing her two young sons by poisoning, while treating them for worms.

One tiny village I'd never previously discovered, Etton, has been a key to me making a few more links. Clement Kisby, the caretaker of Peterborough Cathedral (see previous post) baptises a daughter there in 1645. Just over a century later, William Kisby and Elizabeth Bennington marry at St Stephen's Church, Etton, and it turns out they are the parents of the Kisbys of Langtoft, Lincolnshire - William and Robert, who bequeathed us many modern day Kisbys. Etton is a one and half miles south of the Lincolnshire border, while Langtoft is a similar distance north. I even found one of the most itinerant Kisby's (a test for genealogists), John aka William Kisby - a shepherd who moved between Peterborough, Baston (Lincs), Whittlesey (Cambs), Gedney Hill (Lincs) and back to Peterbrough - baptising his oldest children in Etton.

Hopefully Covid-19 is now behind us, we can start visiting libraries and record office again and I can re-subscribe to Findmypast to scour the Cambridgeshire records.

Dr William Joseph Kisby

It's rare that I receive any communication these days from a fellow Kisby. I expect this is because there's so much available online, fellow Kisbys are able to satisfy their curiosity about their ancestors with a few clicks of the mouse.

However, I had a fascinating email last week from the descendant of a line of Irish Kisbys. Well, they were Anglicans, traced back to William Kisby born circa 1755, so may well have come from England via the military or some other route. Coincidently I'd taken out a subscription to RootsIreland in July so already knew of William's descendants, John Gilman Kisby and William Joseph Kisby, but hadn't worked out the connections.

John Gilman Kisby trained as an apothecary and his son William Joseph Kisby studied Medicine in Dublin, becoming a doctor. Dr Kisby moved across Ireland in his job (no doubt to confuse 21st century genealogists). He married twice, his first wife dying of cancer in August 1884 and William subsequently remarrying his cousin's daughter, Elizabeth Larkin, in October 1884. She was 18 years his junior.

Dr Kisby must surely be the most prolific Kisby. Between his two wives and an apparent mistress too, he produced a total of 17 children!!

Unfortunately for his wife Elizabeth and his largely young family, Dr Kisby died suddenly and tragically on 19 November 1895. He was 51 years old. Living in the Lisnafeddally area of County Monaghan, he had been called out at night during a storm to attend a patient a mile away. He set out on foot but managed somehow to get lost, falling into a ditch and fracturing his skull on a rock, which killed him instantly.

His widow, Elizabeth, emigrated to New York in 1920, together with her son Edward.

Kisbey

Judge William Henry Kisbey (1828-1910)

At last I've managed to finish (and upload to my Kisby website) the annotated pedigree sheets (IR1A) for
Richard KISBEY of Dublin, who gave us the surname variant KISBEY. There are KISBEYs today in the UK and also on the West Coast of the United States.

The KISBEYs are particularly notable, in contrast to the generally humble KISBYs. Richard's namesake son Richard was a parliamentary correspondent for The Times newspaper in London. Another son William became a wealthy County Court Judge in Belfast and Dublin. Several of Judge William's children emigrated to Canada. There is even a town in Saskatchewan named Kisbey after William's son Richard Claudius KISBEY, who had settled in the region, married the local MP's daughter and ran the local mail driving contract. Richard invested in land, some of which he sold in 1904 to become the site of a new settlement that took his name.

One day I need to work out where the Dublin KISBEYs originated. Ireland was part of Great Britain at the time, so I suspect Richard Snr's father may have arrived in Dublin from the mainland, though this is entirely conjecture at the moment based on his status and religion (Church of England). Watch this space!

http://kisby.one-name.net/kisby-family-lines.htm

Kisby.one-name.net

My Kisby/ee/ey website has had a revamp, relocation and a rename. This was forced on me when my previous webhost, Madasafish, took it upon themselves to close down my free hosting account. In July I noticed www.kisbee.co.uk had disappeared along with its email account.

By fortunate coincidence the Guild of One-name Studies (GOONS) launched a website hosting project in June 2015. As a member of GOONS I have been able to move my Kisby/ee/ey website to their servers - and the advantage will be, if the project is successful, my webpages will be preserved there is something happens to me (or I leave the GOONS). I've taken the opportunity to smarten and simplify the website, adding the most important pages from the previous site, while designing a few new ones.

The url is http://kisby.one-name.net

In for a Tweet

To complicate matters further (and save me having to think up more than 140 characters at a time) I'm now tweeting Kisby/ee thoughts, musings and announcements on Twitter.

See https://twitter.com/dekisibi

Of course, I'll continue my blog mutterings as well, when I can think of something interesting requiring more than eighteen or so words...

Website in the usual place...http://www.kisbee.co.uk

Scales of Gray

One mystery solved and another mystery raised, this time involving Kisby ancestors of mine. My Great-times-four Uncle William KISBY died in 1897 leaving a last will and testament, in which he named two of his daughters Susan and Eliza GRAY. This was strange because I couldn't find any record of a GRAY/KISBY marriage, let alone two. I put the mystery to one side and only came back to tackle it recently.

As luck would have it, Susan and Eliza GRAY were living next door to one another in Peterborough in the 1881 and 1891 Censuses, with their husbands George GRAY and David GRAY. Fortunately both couples were around in 1911, when the census asks for detail about how long husbands and wives have been married.

It transpires that Eliza KISBY married in 1870 age 17 to David Gray CODD, in the area of his family's home village of Long Sutton, Lincolnshire. Susan KISBY had also married age 17 in 1866 to a George CODD, though this was in London (shortly before her sister Martha married in nearby Stepney).

Why the CODD brothers became GRAY is the new mystery to be solved. Their mother was born Ann Milson GRAY, so it was a family name but not the birth name (or marriage name) of George and David. George and Susan returned to live in her home village of Coates, Cambridgeshire, where their first child was born Martha Ellen CODD, but their subsequent children were GRAY's. Something ...erm ...fishy happened in the late 1860's in the Fenland area that I've yet to discover...

Cathedral Kisby Caretaker

Peterborough Family History Society have done a marvellous job in transcribing the registers of the Cathedral in Peterborough, from the 1600's to the 2000's. This 400 years of history is all available on CD for the very reasonable sum of £10 (of which £1 goes to the Cathedral funds). Peterborough is the major city in the Kisby heartlands, so I couldn't resist investing some of my savings in this purchase.

Peterboro' Cathedral, West Front (1600's)

The Cathedral was of very major importance. It is known for its imposing (and unique) west facade, built in the 1200's. Henry VIII's first wife Katharine was buried at the Cathedral. Mary Queen of Scots was also interred here. Despite its size, christenings, marriages and burials were not common because, until the 1530's, the building was used as a monastry. It didn't have a font until 1615. Marriages and burials were often of people with a link to the Cathedral ...in contrast, the nearby parish church of St John seems to have been incredibly busy!! But to my delight I found there were a small number of Kisby's who appear in the Cathedral registers. 

Most prominent is one Clement KISBY. Clement, it turns out, was the Sexton for the Cathedral. As far as I understand, a sexton is a glorified caretaker with a key role in running and maintaining the building and its grounds. Clement lived a long and honourable life, it seems. His first wife, Faith, dies in 1668. Later the same year Clement gains a new wife, Ann, at a Cathedral marriage. Clement's son (also called Clement)  marries at the Cathedral too. In 1699 Clement "Sexton of this Church above 50 years"dies in his 80th year and, more impressively still, is "Buryed in the body of the church near the west door." It will be interesting to know whether there is a marker of any kind!

Ann, his widow, seems to have been given a place in an almshouse and dies in 1719.

Well, maybe the parish registers of St John's will reveal where Clement and Faith came from. Clement KISBY isn't a name I've come across until now. But nice to find a KISBY playing such a long and prominent role in city life!

Tha passing of Charles VI

Sad news has arrived of the unexpected death of my cousin, Phil Kisby, who will no doubt be much missed by his wife, children, step-children and his mother. He was christened Philip Charles, so may well be the last in a long line of Charles Kisby's in the family, going back to our great-times-four grandfather, Charles Kisby (d. 1829). There have been Charleses in every generation, with the exception of our respective fathers. Our great-uncle Charles Horace didn't get the opportunity to fill in the missing generation, having had all daughters.

Mind you, Phil's daughter-in-law is a 'Charlie', so maybe we can at least live in hope of some 21st century Charlottes to continue the tradition!

East Anglia meets Eastenders?

For years I've wondered what happened to my great-great-great-great aunt, Sarah Kisby (b. 1815). After convincing myself she died in south London with her illegitimate daughter, I've now solved the mystery. She died in Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, only 3 miles from where she was born.

Chatteris Workhouse

Sarah's life reads like a story line in a soap opera. In 1834 she had an illegitimate daughter, Mary Ann, with a local man, Thomas Corby. In 1837 she gave birth to another baby, a son Charles, in Chatteris Workshouse - maybe she had gone to Chatteris to avoid the scandal?

In 1838 she married local farm labourer, Jonathan Catling. Charles and Mary Ann appear as Catling's in the 1841 census. Sarah and Jonathan had several children together. Then Sarah has probably the worst year of her life, when in 1848 her baby daughter Alice died, followed at Christmas by her husband Jonathan.

At this point the trail ran dry. I imagined Sarah may have left the Whittlesey area to make a new life. I found a Sarah Catling of the correct age (born March, Cambridgeshire) living in London with an anonymously named Miss M. A. Watts. I convinced myself this was the embarassed bastard daughter, Mary Ann, who had assumed a pseudonym!

But the real story was closer to home. Very close. Next door, in fact. In the 1851 Census Sarah Catling, a widow, was living next door to a Robert Haylock, his wife and young children. Robert is a full ten years younger than Sarah. Robert's wife Mary dies before she is 30 and, in 1857, he marries Sarah Catling. Mind you, they marry several weeks after the baptism of their new son John, thereby keeping up the disregard for timeous birth control and moral values! In fact Robert had accepted an illegitimate daughter, Mary Jane, into his first marriage. And to top this all, Sarah has a mystery daughter (another Alice) who is born several years after her first husband dies and a couple of years before her next door neighbour in widowed. I hope you're keeping up!

Well, for good or ill, Sarah's second marriage lasted for over 30 years. She ended her days as Sarah Haylock living in the middle of Whittlesey and finally expiring in 1898, at almost 83 years old. What a very long and productive life!!

In the News since 1783...

The British Newspaper Archives have recently made available images of newspapers going back to the 1700's. I couldn't resist paying my £6.95 to see which Kisby's and Kisbee's had hit the headlines. Fortunately they were few and far between because generally, when they did surface, it was because of an involvement in an unfortunate accident, or a crime.

The earliest mention of the surname seemed to be in 1783, when the intriguingly named Thomas Kisby Twelvetree escaped from Bedford gaol while awaiting hanging for horse-stealing. A five guinea reward was offered for his capture, (though there's no subsequent report about whether the reward was paid out).

John Kisbee (see previous 'Kisby Crims' post) appears numerous times in the Stamford Mercury during the 1830's and 1840's, charged with various crimes from vandalism to theft. He was often living on poor relief so probably driven to crime by poverty ...or possibly sheer opportunism - in 1847 he "appropriated" £5 6s and a cheque for £11 14s which had been dropped by a wealthy gentleman. John caught a train to Peterborough and changed two £5 notes at a pub, raising suspicions somewhat. He was arrested at Stamford railway station on his return. Interestingly he was bailed from gaol by his father, George.

In the same year Elizabeth Kisby, a cook for the Duke of Brunswick, testifies in court on behalf of her master after a claim was made against the Duke by his chimney sweep. Elizabeth blamed the chimney sweep for a fire (causing £5 damage) while the sweep blamed the cook. The sweep claimed he had not been properly paid for three years, while the Duke wanted to offset the damage against the debt. Surprisingly the Duke was found at fault and had to cough-up!

Elsewhere 9 year old George Kisbee, 22 year old George Kisby and 34 year old William Kisby met tragic deaths: young George poisoned himself by inadvertently drinking carbolic acid in 1878; George Kisby was crushed to death by a coal wagon in 1890 after working, without training, in a coal mine for less than a week; William Kisby reached national attention when he and two women employees were killed by a train in October 1943, while driving across a railway level-crossing.

I've been intrigued for a while by "Edward" Kisby and "Helen" Kisby, his wife, a couple of actors who appear in the 1891 Census. The story unfolds somewhat in The Era, a theatrical newspaper of the 1890's, where E. T. Kisby performs across Britain in a variety of secondary roles. More intriguingly his young daughter seems to be a child acting prodigy, known as "Little Vera" and receiving positive reviews on each occasion. Unfortunately being a child prodigy has a time limit and the reports die out after 1897 (when she would have been 14 years old).

All-in-all a very well spent seven quid!!

What do you call a large group of Kisby's...??

A = My Auntie Pam's significant birthday celebration. I must say it was quite a wierd feeling to be in the same room as upwards of 18 fellow Kisby's. Though probably the feeling of wierdness is not shared by most of the gathering, considering Pudsey and its environs have been Kisby heartlands for decades. My aunt has lived in the area all her life and now has nine grandchildren and 4½ great-grandchildren! All the same, after meeting all these fellow Kisby's, my ambition has stil not been fulfilled to meet a Kisby that I'm not related to...

Eight Kisby Lines

Computer is on the blink, which has spurred me to get some of my Kisby records in order. I've been writing up some of the Kisby lineages from which we all descend. In fact, we Kisby's seem to descend from a surprisingly few 18th century families.

The Kisbee's across the world all descend, by one route or another, from Thomas Kisbee of Barnwell, Northamptonshire.

There were Kisby's in Ulster during the 19th century, they may be linked to the 18th century Kisbey's of Dublin. Or maybe not.

From what I can see, the remainder of us seem to result from only eight English Kisby families from the 1700's. Three of them have strong links to the Fenland market town of Whittlesey and may, in turn, be connected to one another. Two families originate from close to the city of Peterborough. There is then another cluster around the east of Northamptonshire and neighbouring Huntingdonshire, which may have a connection at some point (I expect they moved down from the Peterborough area).

All in all, not many families at all, which is useful for yours truly when I write them up.

15 Days - 15 Collections

In an imaginative mood, Ancestry.com have been giving free access to 15 different sets of records, for for the first 15 days of October only. "15 days - 15 FREE collections" has ended now, but I tried to use the opportunity to go Kisby-hunting.

Unfortunately Ancestry's records have a repuation for being badly transcribed. I've tried on several occasions to search the US Census records for Kisby's but rarely with success. For example, the 1920 Census (part of the "15 days" release) should contain dozens of Kisby's but according to the index search there are none! In their defence, the US was populated by immigrants from all nationalities, many of them with unusual unexpected surnames to confuse the transcribers.

So I chose to extract as many KISBY, KISBEE and KISBEY births from the 1916-2005 England & Wales Birth index. I managed to complete the task for the 30 years from 1963 to 1993 (which included the birth entries for my sister and me). Noticeably, during this period, there are almost NO Kisby's born in the old stomping grounds of the English Fens!

Whittlesey Parish Registers

After 20 years of tracing my ancestors in the Whittlesey area of the Cambridgeshire, I've finally invested in some CD's of the local parish registers. Well, actually these CD's were published by Cambs Family History Society in 2009, so they are quite recent. Before then it was a case of searching through fiddly sheets of microfiche, or printed copies at record offices. The new CD's have transcribed the records of Whittlesey St Mary, Whittlesey St Andrew from 1599 to 1950. The church at Coates is also included (built in 1850). Impressive work!! It will certainly keep me busy during the chilly autumn evenings adding names and dates to my family tree!

Kisby - Green

On the subject of Kisby emigrants, Mary Ann Green (nee Kisby) of Thorney, Cambridgeshire, was another Fenlander who left for America with her husband and 3 young children. She eventually had 5 more children in the USA and Canada.

This week their descendant, Kevin Martin, sent me a fabulous photograph of the Green siblings. Judging by the photo, Mary Ann must've had blue eyes at least!

Henry Kisby the Mysterious Pioneer

Thanks to the online publication of the history of Mills County, Iowa, one of the first 'notable' Kisby's I came across was the pioneering Henry Kisby (1818-1908). He apparently emigrated from England in 1847, subsequently building up enough resources to buy himself a 50-acre farm in Glenwood Township. Henry's history is well documented in the 1881 "Mills County History", he was born 12 March 1818 in Lincolnshire, England and his first wife was also English, Ellen Needham, born c.1825.

What is puzzling is that I can find no trace whatsoever of a Henry Kisby in Lincolnshire that fits the bill. A Henry Kisby from Upwell, Cambridgeshire also emigrates to America in 1852, but he is a full 10 years younger. There are Henry's living in Huntingdonshire, but they can all be accounted for. Ellen, on the other hand, may have came from anywhere in England.

Maybe Henry changed his name when he arrived on America's shores. Whatever the explanation, it's a mystery I'd be delighted to solve!