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Frequently Asked Questions

Are you still maintaining this website?
If I send you an email Will I get a reply?
Why is your email address sean(insert @ here)kisbee.co.uk
Why "kisbee.co.uk" and not "kisby.co.uk"?
My surname is also Kisby - are we related??
How do I discover my family tree?
Why is this site dedicated to Ettie Wadsworth?

Are you still maintaining this website?

Yes. OK, I realise there is not a lot of fresh, new information here. And the site looks a bit dated. This is partly because I have been extremely busy with an intensive college course. In addition, I have been spending more time recently building the interesting family tree on my mother's side of my family. There is lots of information and family records on this side of my family, including a family bible that I discovered in a bookshop recently, dated 1853! Having said all that, I am constantly looking for ways to augment and improve 'www.kisbee.co.uk'.

If I send you an email will I get a reply?

I certainly hope so. I check my email account regularly. Thankyou to everyone who has contacted me over the last 12 months or so. A few words of friendly advice follow - if you would like to leave a short greeting then my Visitors Book is fine. Otherwise, to stand more chance of a personal reply, please click on the 'envelope' icon, at the bottom of most of my pages. I strongly recommend you give your message a subject title that explains itself clearly - messages entitled "Hi", "Hello", "Please Read" (or "Do you want a cheap loan/college degree/rolex watch/lottery win/illegal drugs/larger manhood etc.") look too much like SPAM so will be swiftly deleted.

Why is your email address "sean(insert @ here)kisbee.co.uk"?

Yeah, when you click on the envelope icon at the bottom of a page your email programme will show this strange email address sean(insert @ here)kisbee.co.uk! Simply follow the instruction, substituting the symbol @ for the phrase (insert @ here). There is a good reason for this devious complication. For example there are 'robots' that trawl the internet for email addresses so that irritating people can use these addresses to send unwanted SPAM. Often the robots can recognise email address formats. My email address is available in many places online and has been so now for 5 years. To make it difficult for automated robots to recognise and collect my email address, I have to disguise it slightly, as you have discovered!

Why 'kisbee.co.uk' and not 'kisby.co.uk'?

A common question. The simple answer is that the web address 'www.kisby.co.uk' had been registered and reserved by somebody else.  And 'kisbee'??  In the days of my radical youth I refused to pay Maggie Thatcher's "Poll Tax" and only avoided being taken to court because (thanks to my landlord's bad spelling) my bills had been sent in the name of Mr S. M. Kisbee ("who he, m'lud?").  Therefore I have a fond attachment to 'kisbee' and the web address 'www.kisbee.co.uk' was born.  Honestly I had no idea at the time that there were so many Kisbee's in existence. Apologies to any agrieved Kisbee's but, hey, we are probably all related to the same C13th knight!!!

My surname is also Kisby - are we related?

Quite possibly, but there are plenty of Kisby's lurking in all corners of the World. Take a look at some of my Kisby family trees on this site. And also my Kisby database. You can find these from my main Kisby/ee/ey Index Page. I have met a distant cousin who lives just up the road. And bumped into another distant relative purely by coincidence in a town museum! If your surname is Fovargue, or Blunt, or Baines (particulary from the English Fens) then maybe you are related to 'my' Kisby's aswell!!

How do I discover my family tree?

The very place to start is sitting on the couch with one of your elderly relatives. Ask them what they know - try and record every detail, even the strangest facts may turn out to be true. And people remember wonderful details that you will never discover elsewhere. For example, my great aunt told me she had an uncle called 'Bat' - 15 years later I discovered an uncle of hers indeed had the middle name of 'Batson'. There are many excellent websites and repositories that can help you delve further. Some of my favorites are listed on my Favorite Links page. Again, remember to keep a list of the records, and people you have consulted, so you don't repeat work. And record where you obtained your facts so that, in the future, you can check if your assumptions were correct. Good luck!

Why is this site dedicated to Ettie Wadsworth?

I'm glad you asked. Ettie was my great-aunt ('Ant Ett', as she would say). She was born Ethel Kisby, growing up and living in Leeds, Yorkshire (England). She married her childhood sweetheart, Harold Wadsworth. Ettie became a professional dressmaker and, being tall and slim, would also model dresses in the top Leeds department stores of the 1930's. Like her father before her Ettie was a strong, extrovert character. She lived for the moment. Consequently she had little interest in family history. All the same, she answered my long list of questions about her predecessors politely and, it turned out, very accurately. When she passed away at a grand age she left me enough money to buy my first computer. So she not only started my early search for my predecessors, she also gave me the oportunity to share my discoveries on the World Wide Web.