My father put together our family
tree until about the mid 1600's in Bampton North
Devon and there was no way of going back further
as the local church was sacked and records destroyed
in the Civil War (1642 - 1651).
I went on holiday to Perth in Western Australia
to see friends and while driving around found a
"Gibbings Road" about 110KM south of Perth
in a place called "Coolup". Now our name
is not common so I had to make enquiries and supprise
surprise in Lot 1 Gibbings Road a lady still lived
who had been a Miss Gibbings. She recognised me
as "a Gibbings" when I knocked on the
door and showed me photographs of her relations
who looked the same as mine but weren't. She provided
me with their family history back to a ship called
the "John C Munro" which left London for
Fremantle on 28th March 1886 with a William Pockcock
Gibbings (Born 1829 died 1892) , his wife Fanny
Mary and their nine children. They came to take
up land offered to settlers but found it was just
bush and had a very hard life for a while. They
went shopping by Ox cart twice a year in Perth and
the journey took nearly a week. The family still
farm this land and have thrived. She had discovered
that William was decended from Nicholas Gibbings
born in Frogbury Farm Coldridge in about 1753. She
also knew that there were connections with Springle
Moor as in 1777 Nicholas Gibbings married a Susan
Evans. There was then a John Gibbings at Nymch Rowland
who married a Jane Leach in Morchard Bishop and
he died in Broadstairs Kent in 1876. They had a
son William Gibbings born in Morchard Bishop 28th
June 1829 and it was he who went to Australia.
Now it gets more complicated: - We both knew we
had to be related somewhere - the uncommon name
and photos that just looked so alike so I had to
go to Coldridge. There were Gibbings in the graveyard
but much more important a John Gibbings was the
Vicar of Coldridge from 1571 to 1602 and his name
was on the wall by the church door. He had 12 children
so it was not going to be easy. However the third
child Walter Gibbings born 1582 (d 1633) had six
children and their fourth child John born 26th February
1610 married a Jane Head in Coldridge and they had
six children the fourth of which was a Thomas born
1642 and it was his decendants who I have traced
as a direct link with the Australians. So I had
now taken the Australian side back to 1571.
If we now go back to the original John (the Vicar)
and his third child Walter, I traced our side of
the family to his sixth child Thomas Jnr (remember
the Austrailian came from his fourth child John
and his son Thomas, so our lines split in 1610 -
1615).
Thomas Jnr was born 2nd August 1615 and there, for
us, the story ends in Coldridge. He went to Oakford,
(about halfway between Bampton and Coldridge) as
a miller (there were two mills in Oakford and one
is still there) and other members of the family
bought a Mill in Bampton which still exhists and
I have met their relations. Thomas Jnr was very
difficult to trace but a Thomas and an Elizabeth
from Oakford (the son of Thomas Jnr?) arrived in
Bampton and had a son John born 1688 and they had
a son William born1712 and there were still connections
with Oakford but the wives appear to come from Bampton.
Our family tree is in Bampton from then on. I still
need to try and nail the links in Oakford but there
is no doubt that is how the line goes. Thanks for
all the help I received in Coldridge with typed
copies of the parish register and I followed that
up in the records office at Souton Exeter. To stand
where a relation had stood some 450 years ago in
your church was quite something and to see his signature
on the actual Parish Record was something else.
