Harding and Ibbotson Family History
The Harding and Ibbotson family history in Australia offers a rich tapestry of stories, tracing migration from England and Ireland through to modern-day descendants.
Prepared by Ken Harding
Introduction
This Harding & Ibbotson family history research began with the intention of tracing my English & Irish ancestors of the Australian branch of my relatives, specifically those that settled on the Bellarine Peninsula near Geelong, Victoria, in the 1800s.
I have relied on numerous resources including Ancestry.com, British & Australian newspaper archives, open-source records, wills and conveyance records, cemetery records, family records and most usefully, in the case of the Ibbotson family, a 1982 two-part publication by former Yorkshire librarian Rosamund Meredith, Farms and Families of Hathersage Outseats. The latter is now out of print but copies of same were provided to me by current owners of some of the former Ibbotson properties during a visit to Hathersage in May 2023.
I have traced the Ibbotson ancestors as far back as the mid 1600s to the Parishes of Hathersage & Hope in Derbyshire when the likes of Baptism, Death & Marriage (BDM) records became accessible.
The BDM records produced at the time were rudimentary at best.
Birth dates, as opposed to Baptism dates, were not generally recorded for another 150 years or so. During the 1600s & 1700s there was little detail given. Baptisms were recorded as the child of the father. Mothers rarely got a mention except where the mother was unmarried and the child was recorded as the ‘illegitimate child of’ or ‘bastard child of’. The mother was then named but not the father. Such was the status of women in the eyes of the church! The neighbouring Parish of Hope was an exception. Mothers were usually included in Baptism records.
Likewise, ages at death were not given. If the death was a child (under 21) only the father was usually recorded. Again, the mother it seems didn’t count.
It wasn’t until around 1813 that the law changed and both parents were recorded along with ages at death for both children & adults. Death records could then often be used to trace back to baptisms, presuming that births took place shortly before baptism, which wasn’t always the case, & thus full parentage.
With these issues it became necessary to extract every Ibbotson name from the BDM registers over a 200-year period. It was then usually possible to determine who was born to who etc although there were a few Ibbotsons who cannot be connected and presumably the progeny of much earlier Ibbotsons.
Further complicating research was naming conventions or lack thereof. Some of the parish BDM records go back to the 1500s, initially written in Latin and often damaged or otherwise illegible. Even when English became the norm in the early 1600s, Christian names were still known for a while by the earlier version eg: Edward was Eduardis, Robert was Robertus and Henry was Henri or Henricus.
Likewise, surname conventions varied and seemed to have been written as they sounded and often changed/varied when church officials changed even though they were clearly of the same person/family. Ibbotson as we know it today was variously written as Ibutson, Ibbutson or Ibottson among other variations. It wasn’t until around 1735 that the current spelling became consistent in the Parishes of Hathersage & Hope. Curiously though one branch of the Parish of Hope Ibbotsons changed the spelling of the name to Ibberson.
I then extended my research to siblings of my direct ancestors. It then became necessary to consult neighbouring & nearby Parish records in Derbyshire as well as Bradfield & Sheffield in Yorkshire where Ibbotson families had lived for at least as early as those in the Hope Valley, Derbyshire.
WOW!! I REALLY love what you (Ken & Shannon) have done with these family histories!! They look so good & easy to read & look at the photos!! I’ll let everyone else know what a terrifc project you’ve done for all of us!!
Sincerely, Glenn Harding
Fantastic work here Dad and Shannon