My interest in the name BARSBY started many years ago when my aunt gave me the original marriage certificate for my great grandparents Emma Amelia BARSBY and John Robertson who were married on 25 Dec 1886 in Bethnal Green. (Original Certificate shown above) This is what started my original interest in family history and in June 2017 my Barsby One-Name Study.

Emma's father was shown as John Henry BARSBY who was a 'Captain'. The family story was that he was a Captain in the Merchant Navy and that he was lost at sea when Emma was about 8 (about 1871). After long research I became more and more mystified about John Henry.

I finally discovered the final destination of John Henry Barsby was Australia as he eloped and married another lady while his wife in England (and mother of his English children) was still alive. Bigamy seems to be a theme in my One-Name Studies.

I have very recently restarted the One-Name study which was originally registered many years ago by a friend of mine and I have her permission to revive it.

If you have connection to Barsby within your family please get in touch via the link at the bottom of the page and I will do my best to help.

At the moment I only have 2 variants, Barsbey and Barsbe but I am sure I will come across more as the One-Name Study progresses. Going back over some of the Merchant Seaman Records that I hold for John Henry I noticed that his surname is also shown as Barsley so I also consider this a variant.

There is a village in Leicestershire/Rutland called Barsby so I am as sure as I can be that the name originated from there. In the 1881 Census the majority of people named Barsby live in either Leicestershire or Rutland which is not surprising.

In 1881 Census there are a total of 516 people with the surname Barsby. The majority are in Leicestershire (190) with 76 in Nottinghamshire, 68 in Derbyshire, 61 in Lincolnshire and 31 in Rutland with a few in other counties. I am yet to check the other Censuses and I am sure they will reflect a similar distribution in England.

Checking the results for other countries is on my 'to do' list.

Barsby is now distributed across the world with families emigrating to the United States of America and Australia in the 19th Cenury (and probably since). I have recently also fouind that there was a family in South Africa as well in the 19th Century.

As far as data is concerned, I am collecting England & Wales Birth/Marriage/Death & Census data which I am putting into families as I go along. I will be expanding my data collection to the rest of the world in the future as I am aware that there are families in the USA/Canada and Australia. I plan to look at 1950 US Census in the near future-on my to do list.

I have recently been able to obtain every reference to BARSBY in 1921 England & Wales Census. I have created a spreadsheet of the information so please contact me if you have a Barsby family in 1921.

I have a website https://barsby.one-name.net/ (See link further up the page).

I have recently updated the tree on my website (as at 6 Jun 2022). Please contact me at the link below if you would access to the ONS tree on that website.

I do not have a DNA project at present but may go down that route in future.