Cine footage with a few stills thrown in of my Grandpa Hibbitt (Charles George Hibbitt: 1898-1972).

Known as Charlie, he was born near Dundalk in Ireland. His father was a Coastguard and the family moved around before settling in Devon. Charlie went to live and work in Tavistock as a telephone engineer and inspector before retiring to East Allington in the South Hams area of Devon.

Grandpa's hobbies included cars and motorbikes (he was a motorcycle despatch rider during WW1), boats, short wave radio, photography and capturing cine films. He was more often than not, behind the camera, but I've managed to find a few short clips of him amongst the family collection.


This video can also be viewed on my YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNs3ymlohd0 and in my website video gallery.

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Blacksmiths Lane, Exton, Rutland
(Photograph kindly supplied by Caroline White, a distant cousin in Oundle, Peterborough.)

I'm seeking men called HIBBITT / HIBBETT or any of the variants listed here, to see whether you would be willing to test your Y DNA. If your name isn't Hibbitt but you suspect you are descended from a direct paternal ancestor with the name, then come on board.

Sorry ladies, we don't possess a Y chromosome but it would still be great to compare if you have taken an autosomal test such as the AncestryDNA, 23andMe, Family Finder or MyHeritage test. If so, please get in touch.

Since my dad took the Big Y DNA test at FamilyTreeDNA we've discovered that an ancestor of ours may have lived in or around the Stirling area of Scotland in Roman times.

Y DNA traces the patrilineal line (eg. father's father's father, etc.) which, in our case, is our Hibbitt line. However, this particular ancestor would have lived in a time before the adoption of surnames.

I've put together a comprehensive account of the history of my Hibbitt line dating from 60,000 years ago to the present day.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

Through traditional research, I've traced my Hibbitts back to the beginning of the 18th century. I found my 6 x great-grandfather, John Hybit, living in a village called Exton located in the county of Rutland, the smallest county in England.

Dad's DNA matches quite a number of men who have all tested positive for a SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) called R-S424, otherwise known as the Little Scottish Cluster. Many men, but not all, in the S424 project at FTDNA trace their ancestry to southern Scotland where their common ancestor is believed to have lived centuries ago.

Just how and when our relatives found their way from Scotland to Rutland remains a mystery but I'm hoping that, as additional data comes in from more Y-DNA testers, we may learn more about the Z36747 subclade which is dad's current terminal SNP. Dad has some novel variants in his Big Y test which may tell us more in the future if another Big Y tester has the same variant(s).

If you are a male called HIBBITT (or a variation of the name) please would you consider taking a Y-DNA test. It doesn't necessarily have to be the Big Y as there may be cheaper options depending on your goals. It may also be possible to obtain some Y DNA data from an autosomal test too. Please contact me if you'd like more information or if you do decide to test.

John Hybit seems to have been the progenitor of so many who carry variations of his name and it would be good to learn whether we are all related and where he might have originated from.

READ ABOUT THE DEEP ANCESTRAL ROOTS OF THE HIBBITT FAMILY HERE

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Charles George Hibbitt at Princetown during the harsh winter of 1947
working as a telephone inspector.
After yesterday's post which included the picture of my Grandpa Hibbitt inspecting telephone wires, my dad filled me in with a few more details. This is what he had to say...

I was with Dad that day when we went up to Princetown and I took the picture of him holding the old overhead junction route between Tavistock and Princetown with his old box camera. The wires should have been some 30 feet up, but the sheer weight of the ice broke the poles carrying them and were just stumps when we got there. Needless to say Princetown was cut off from the outside world telephonically.

When we returned home, we blackened out the bathroom and "fixed" and "developed" that picture and some others that we had taken that day. (Fixing and developing were done in two trays of acid separately).

The snow/ice was six, yes, six feet thick, and you could walk on it as if it were a pavement. Temperature would be about minus five, with wind chill when it blew. That point would have been about 1400 feet above sea level, higher than Princetown itself. The fir trees in the background were cut down years ago and now appears as a field and of course, all the junction circuits are, and have been, laid underground in the road for many years.

This wasn't the first time Grandpa had encountered the harsh Dartmoor winter. Click the links below to view newspaper cuttings of when his Post Office van got stuck in a snowdrift near Postbridge in 1935.

Link 1
Link 2

They were hard winters, for sure!

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Charlie Hibbitt and his sister, Nell
Remembering my grandpa, Charles George Hibbitt, who passed away on this day 45 years ago. I have many happy memories of my Grandpa Hibbitt including our times spent on his boat which you can read about in my previous post.


Charlie Hibbitt at Princetown during the harsh winter of 1947 working as a telephone inspector.
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Part of my Dad's AncestryDNA Match List
A nice surprise popped up in my family's DNA match lists a couple of days ago. Unknown to me, the grand-daughter of a known cousin on my dad's side took the AncestryDNA test. I still have a few gaps in my family tree and having other close relatives tested makes it easier to narrow down on which side of the family to concentrate the search. My dad was an only child and and so was his mother so my only hope of finding a close cousin is on my dad's father's side so you can imagine how thrilled I was to see this match appear.

I remain hopeful that one day I will be able to discover who my 2 x great-grandfather's parents were. My ancestor, Henry Ridley, was born in Birmingham in about 1841 but this is all I know of him. The new cousin match is also descended from Henry and so anyone matching both her and my dad will point to a match on the Hibbitt/Ridley side of the family.

Noted by Ancestry as a 3rd-4th cousin, the relative is actually a 1st cousin 3 times removed to my dad and shares 144 centimorgans across 8 DNA segments. Because older generations share more DNA, I'm looking forward to other members of her family testing too.

[Note: All content on the Hibbitt & Barnes Family History website and blog is copyrighted. Click here for conditions of use.]