An introduction to the Stiby family tree, from about 1540 to the present

The Stiby Family

My Mother was a Stiby (pronounced Sty-be). As far as we know all the Stibys in Britain are descended from a single family of Huguenots who fled to England from France shortly after 1540. The Huguenots were French Protestants. The Edict of Fontainebleau, passed by the French King Francis the First in 1540, took away all the rights of French Protestants, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries many Huguenots fled from France to England and Switzerland and other countries to avoid persecution and death.

Two people, Julia Stiby and Ann Partington, have made a very comprehensive Stiby family tree, and I have put it into a computer and am now maintaining it. Julia is a Stiby by marriage and Ann a Stiby by descent. Thank you Julia and Ann for all the hard work which has made these web pages possible.

The Stiby Family Tree currently spans fifteen generations so to make it manageable I have split it into three sections - this is greatly helped by the fact that many of the lines of descent become extinct. If you select the Full Screen option in your browser you should not need to scroll any section vertically, although you will of course need to scroll it horizontally.

For clarity the Family Tree pages are printed on a white background, not papyrus as for all other pages of my web site, and all the navigation icons are in the top left hand corner, except of course the links to other family tree pages.

Section A covers eight generations, from about 1540 to about 1750, from John Stiby of Knoll to Henry Stiby who was married to Ann Greening and Robert Stiby who was married to Ursula Abbot.

During this time John Stiby and all his descendents were living in just five villages in Dorset - to see these on a map please click here

Section B covers the descendants of Robert Stiby and Ursula Abbot, from about 1750 to the present, and Section C covers the descendants of Henry Stiby and Anne Greening, from about 1750 to the present.

There were only twenty four Stibys on the 1999 British Electoral Roll, so it is quite a rare surname.

Sections A, B and C are restricted to those with the name Stiby, their spouses and their children, although the full family tree on my computer includes many other descendants of John Stiby of Knoll.

Section D shows the descendants of Frances Mary Stiby and Ernest Groves who emigrated to Canada, and Section E shows the descendants of Winifred Stiby and William Insell. These Pages are based upon information supplied to me, some years ago, by the two families, but are not being maintained.

The Insell family, including the descendants of William Insell and Winifred Stiby, is being separately researched - for information please visit the Insell website at http://www.insell.co.uk/ions/index.html

Please note that the information on this web site is only an extract from the full computer version of the family tree. I am however willing to e-mail a part or all of the family tree, in GEDCOM format, to any Stiby who wants it.

For reasons of security and privacy the only keywords used in the headings of these web pages are Stiby and stiby so only someone seaching for these names will find them - a search on, say, Thomas Stiby will not be successful. No information about any living person except date of birth is available from any of these pages.

Any information about any Stibys, living or departed, would be very gratefully received, preferably by e-mail.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries not everyone could read or write so if a man could not write his name he would say it and a clerk would write it down for him. Spellings of surnames therefore varied considerably, so we have Stiby, Styby, Stibey and Stybey. Stivy and Stily are probably other variations, and one present-day Stivy has traced her ancestry to a Stivy who was the son of Amos Stiby who was the grandson of John Stiby of Knoll. The origin of the name Stiby is probably from the French name Stibbe.

Barry Gray June 2020