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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 "kisbee.co.uk" and not "kisby.co.uk"?
My surname is also Kisby - are we related??
How do I discover my family tree?
How do I access the password protected part of this website?
Why is this site dedicated to Ettie Wadsworth?

Are you still maintaining this website?

Yes, I hope you notice the recent improvements and additions. I realise that there have been long periods in the recent past when little has changed. This is partly because I have a busy job and a career to consider! In addition, I have been spending time adding to 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 rediscovered in an English bookshop, dated 1853! Having said all that, I am constantly looking for ways to augment and improve 'www.kisbee.co.uk' therefore suggestions and feedback are welcome.

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 decade of this website's existence! If you would like to leave a short greeting then my Visitors Book is a great place to start. You will receive an automated reply message and occasionally I may reply in person. Otherwise, to stand more chance of a personal reply, please click on the 'envelope' icon, which appears at the bottom of most of my site's 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 and are likely to be swiftly deleted.

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, more than I ever expected. I am carrying out a Kisby/ey/ee One-name-study and have a database of more than 2000 individuals spanning 500 years. Take a look at some of the Kisby information available on this site. I also have an online database (updated 2008). You can find these from my main Kisby/ee/ey Index Page. I've encountered many distant relatives via this website. I have also been introduced to a not-too-distant Kisby cousin who lives a few miles up the road. And I 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!

How do I access the password protected part of this website?

The password protected area of this website should be available shortly. This area will hopefully include the online databases, family trees, Kisby/ee/ey birth/marriage/deaths information, census information, wills etc. If you wish to receive the access details when they are ready, please contact me. As you will appreciate, the interest in online genealogy has mushroomed during the last few years. There are very many genuine and thoughtful family historians out there, but there are also some less scrupulous individuals and organisations that will use data for the wrong purposes. As I have an interest in the surname Kisby/ee/ey as a whole, I made the decision that I would prefer to know who wanted to use the data on this site. There are a fair number of people accessing www.kisbee.co.uk but relatively few who bother to leave an acknowledgement!

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.