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Hi Iain Rutherford yes I remember the golf course at BRYNROAD ASHTON and the wood, an` tips spent many a time down there in summer school holidays the pond as i new it was called the "Valley" all the local lads used to swim there. Pinched many a golf ball and got chased Happy days.

I am looking for christopher marsden,born ca 1789,mother Betty.children in clude mary,jane,alice,peter among others.It seems christopher married a few times but a wife was never around in the 1841 and 1851 censuses. I am also looking for any info on henry Derbyshire who married Margaret moor.He was born ca 1799. Would welcome any info.
Your website is excellent for research and very easy to follow, Brenda

Point taken Anthony but I still have to say the information I have retrieved on the website of the LDS's site has been accurate & very helpful. It's a good place to start looking for a name .... but as you say local records & census data are invaluable for researching.

hi christine
try wigan cemetery records which can be located on wiganworlds home page

Christine, I don't think anyone could object to you locating or visting any grave as they are, for the most part, in public grounds. The excellent work done on this website in providing an index for the Wigan and Westwood cemeteries has been first-rate. There are of course many very small graveyards in the wigan area that are not indexed online, but there will be a record available via the church.

Contacting the churchwarden is probably the best place to start, they are duty-bound for the upkeep of the church grounds and will be able to advise on the location of graves etc.

Can anybody tell me if I need permission to locate a grave in Wigan Cemetary and if I do where do I get it from, as I am currently searching for the grave of my great-grandfather

In response to Helen. While perhaps most of the Mormon geneaology tables are well-intentioned and accurate, there have been cases of certain people adding segments of other people's familiy trees, taken from the internet, in their fruitless quest to establish geneology to Adam and Eve.

It is important to bear in mind that Mormon geneaologists are trying to prove that all people on Earth are related, and consequently, they don't have any moral reservations about using other peoples family trees and linking them to their own. That of course is not to say that some of what they publish is true, but their 'Agenda' to link families together, for religious reasons, does create artificial lineages.

It is always best to stick to official sources like Births, Deaths, Marriages, School and Military records. Also reliable are Parish records and personal histories like family bibles.

It is certainly not advisable to entrust something as important as your family history to unofficial secondary sources on the internet, especially if those secondary sources are trying to establish geneaology for financial gain or to pursue a religious agenda.

Official familiy records in the UK are among the best kept in the world and sticking to official state records provides a pure familiy history, however such information is then published online there is great danger that some groups will steal segments of the family tree and claim it as their own, especially if the family name or locational history is the same.

It would help us all if government were to 'copyright' this sort of information and make it illegal to falsify familiy trees.
One might argue that it doesn't really matter if someone uses a name from 400 years ago, but in so doing they completely devalue the whole point of geneology. Such actions make a family tree worthless and render family histories pointless.

The Wigan area is especially good for researching family histories because the area isn't cosmopolitan and has had settled communities for many generations. So government and official church registers in the Wigan area are very good.

I've learnt through a lot of research, that it is best to stick to the official records, even if that type of research takes longer it proves to be completely accurate.

Re Anthony's remark about the mormon genealogy site(s) I have used the offical LDS (Mormon) website for tracing family history & have found it very useful..does it really matter that a name might go down on their records ? It might be quite useful to someone else 100yrs down the line. Just a thought.

Thank you Anthony for the very interesting information, much appreciated! Joanne

Joanne, probably the best place to look is the Lancashire BDM website. It is very useful in tracking down basic information.

I strongly advise you not to trace ancestors through commercial ancestry sites because they will charge you money and then only provide information that can already be obtained through the internet. Often these ancestry sites will invent names just to take your money.

I also strongly advise you not to trust the many online Mormon geneology sites which likewise often invent or steal from other people's familiy trees in an attempt to establish lineage. It would appear that these sites are hoping to establish family trees that go back to Adam and Eve. However, even the most religious person would no doubt concede that to attempt such a lineage is absolutely impossible, given that surnames have only been used officially for the last 800 years.

It might be worth you writing a letter, rather than an e-mail, to local councils and parishes to ask about ancestors. When tracing my mother's family tree I discovered that a direct ancestor had originated from Hastings and so I wrote an exploratory letter to ask if any more details were available. I not only received a helpful reply, but also information going back to marriages and baptisms from 1668. In total four generations back from my original inquiry. The family in Hastings claimed desent from the 'De Marsco' line of Norman knights, which just goes to show that you never know what sort of surprise a family search will bring up.

So, its all well worth the effort and, of course once you discover another layer, a new generation, another set of parents, you are taken on a new trail as you go on to research the maiden name etc.

Good luck with your search of the Bibby name, I am certain that this name orginates from the time of the DANELAW when Northern England was ruled by the Vikings. The English word 'Bib' translates into the Viking Dansk Tung as 'hagesmaek' which means something in the shape of a horseshoe, in modern Danish the word also means a babys bib, which of course is shaped like a horseshoe. So the word 'bib' combined with the Scandinavian word for a town 'By', making Bibby, would mean something like 'Horseshoemakers town', an alternate theory is that the old English word to drink, to 'Bib', could be merged with 'By' etc. The thing is no-one really knows for certain and all we can do is work out the cryptic clues to try and make sense of the meaning.

http://www.lancashirebmd.org.uk/

I was wondering if anyone has any memory of the BIBBY family which originated in Wigan, from the Orrell area? My great grandfather was PETER BIBBY married EMILY BROWN of GOOSE GREEN. Emily's father GEORGE BROWN was first married to ANN ORRELL then later married Emily's mother ELLEN LUCAS and had more children, Emily being one of them born in 1876.
Peter Bibby's father was JAMES BIBBY and his mother was SARAH CATHERINE ROSCOE. Any information would be greatly appreciated.

thanks atlas for the imfo used to climb the slag heaps using the gulley formed by the rain water and there were some reserviors there which i suppose were used in the present development will need to pay a visit to see if i can regognise anything

Iain, all landscaped lakes woods and a motor racetrack its called the three sisters after the slag heaps that once was there its a nice place now

anyone remember the old golf course at ashton used to live ther my dad was greenkeeper .was surrounded by pit bings and there was a disused colliery nearby we moved bact to Scotland when the course was moved in the early sixties

thank you for your info on here anthony it is very interesting to know

LEYLAND:
Origin Anglo-Saxon, meaning the name developed between the period 410.AD and 1066. As you might imagine the name is locational in origin, from the Lacashire region of Leyland, although spellings will have varied down the years. The area of Leyland was ruled by the Vikings under the DANELAW, when large numbers of Vikings settled in Lancashire, Yorkshire and North Eastern England. So there is a strong possibilty that those carrying the name are of Viking Descent.

CALDERBANK:
Again this name is Anglo-Saxon and will have developed between 410.AD and 1066, although surnames proper only really came into full use in the eleventh century. Previous spellings of the name have also been 'Calderbeck' which indicat a Germanic Saxon influence. The Saxons were people from modern day Germany who moved in large numbers to England after the Romans left in 410.AD.

WHITE:
This name can have several origins but it is first documented as an Anglo-Norman name under Matthew and Hubert Le Blanc who held titles in Normandy in 1180 and when moving to England will have changed from Blanc to the English version White. The name may also indicate an ancestor who originally came from the Isle of White. The Isle has been occupied by Romans, Vikings and Normans, in the Doomsday book census it is called simply 'Wit'.

FINCH:
This name definately began as a Norman name and originates from the French 'De Vendome', the family held land and an abbey in Preuilly, Anjou. Finch is an English sobriquet converted into a surname. It is found very often in Ireland due to the Norman lords who settled there from 1169 onwards.

I hope this helps, when studying names its worth remembering that spellings varied down the years due to the evolution of the English language and the fact priests often had different ways of writing a name.

Surnames often give a clue as to their origin. For example 'Fitz' at the beginning of a name indicates a French-Norman origin, being a Norman-French version of 'Fils' meaning son, so Fitzpatrick, may sound Irish but in fact is a Norman name.

The ending of words is a good indicator too. For example 'By' at the end of a word tends to indicate a Viking orign as 'By' is the Scandinavian word for 'Town'. So a surname like 'Bibby','Libby' or Oxtoby is almost certainly of Viking origin.

The origin of the name Wigan itself has been subject to various explanations but I think the most likely is that the Saxons named the area Wigan after the old Saxon word 'Wig' which means 'To fight' because it was the scene of a great battle. So Wigan meaning 'The place of fights' was named.

Wigan is a very interesting location because it has seen Roman, Saxon, Viking and Norman occupation and settlement, large numbes of Bretons also settled in the area. So the local population is likely to be a mix of all these groups.

Hi night owl i am a calderbank and am related to all the names you mentioned are you related to any of these names and if so which ones

Anthony you seem to be well informed about the history of names very interesting, my family hail from Wigan could you please give me any info on these names?
LEYLAND
CALDERBANK
WHITE
FINCH
Thank you.

cath jones,go to communicte,click on places, page 10 half way down. you will see the assie wha has been asking about you

The same person said that someone from Australia had been asking if anyone knew where I was. They referred to my maiden name Cathy Smith and my married name Jones. I can't find that message