The Research

After years of research I have decided to put some of the family history findings online and will happily share lots more if you want to contact me. Much of the research has been through various family history sites but also including birth, marriage and death certificates, and some historic books and newspaper articles.

The research has focused on 4 branches of the family, Machan, Tibbot & Harrogate, Robertson & Duncan, and the Usher family. It all started when the 1901 census was published and I wanted to find out the real name of my grandmother Daisy who was born in 1900 somewhere in Wales.  She had gone through life not knowing her real surname, had never seen a birth certificate and I remembered a holiday to North Wales when I was 7 or 8 and driving around to see if anything rang a bell or jogged a memory.  So how did I find that her maiden name was Tibbot?  Searches for siblings knowing she had an older sister (Lilian) and brother (Bert).  This one break through opened a whole family that was unknown about. After now 12-years the mystery is still only part solved as through research for every answer another question is asked.  The reason why Joseph Tibbot (father) disappeared from the family, although he died 35-years later, and why Laura Loiusa Tibbot (nee Rowden) left with Joseph Harrogate.

The level of any research will start to identify such skeletons and through the research in my family alone we have bigomy, prison, heraldry, disappearances, and accidents.  As you open one door another closes but equally there are other choices to be made.  Assumptions are made and some are substantiated years later.