HEBBORN FAMILY HISTORY & NEWS -  September 2004

MISSING LINKS

Last month I told of Joan Williams research into the Iffley Parish Registers. Her discovery of serious shortcomings in those registers highlights the importance of looking at original documents. It is so easy to look at an index of entries and take for granted that an ancestor had not been baptised in that parish. Of course the gaps in a register are noted in the introduction to a good transcription. How easy it is to pass over this in the haste to get on with the work. I have certainly been guilty of this. By looking at the original Iffley register it becomes apparent that it had been compiled retrospectively, with entries by family rather than date. The fact that a parish of this size would only record thirteen baptisms in nearly forty years is hard to believe. It seems that the Bishops Transcripts that exist for this period are equally unreliable

We are left in the frustrating position of having Hebborn ancestors recorded in Iffley before and after this forty year lapse, with no way of ever finding records of those baptised, married or buried in the intervening years.

There are no baptisms of Hebborns in Iffley between:
John Hebborn [B002] baptised 16 Oct 1654 son of Christopher Hebborn [A001] and Mary
and
Henery Heborn [C001] baptised 17 Nov 1695 son of Henery Heborn [B001] and Catherine.  

This is all very frustrating, as Henery [B001] may well have been a son of Christopher, and brother of John.

Entries after 1697 give clues to Hebborns who should appear in the registers of the ‘missing years’. Here are some that come to mind.

[B020]Thomas Heborn married to Ursula. Possibly baptised and even married in Iffley. There is a possible link to Iffley/Cowley through his son Richard [C004].
[B004]Christopher Hepbourn buried 30 Dec 1714 at Iffley. Might be a son of Christopher     [A001]. No information as to a possible marriage.
[C010]Sarah Hepburn who married John Edny at Iffley on 14 July 1714. Was she born a Hebborn or was she a Hebborn widow?
#Joan Heborn buried at Iffley 25 Nov 1720. again there is no clue as to whether she was born with the name or acquired it by marriage.

I fear that we will never discover entries for this lost generation of Hebborns. The situation is even worse in the adjoining parish of Cowley, which was also home to Hebborns. Here all the registers prior to 1678 (baptisms) and 1696 (marriages and burials) have been lost or destroyed. Taking the Iffley and Cowley Hebborn line back any further seems most unlikely.

If you can prove descent from the aristocracy or landed gentry you might be able to trace your ancestors back before Henry VIII imposed the keeping of parish registers on the clergy. In fact, a pretty plausible line back to the reign of King John has been made out for a Hebborne family from Northumberland. I make no claim to a connection with that ancient family. I am realistic enough to know that my forebears were poor sons of the soil right up until the middle of the nineteenth century. Then the railway came to Oxford, and carried many of the young men and women off to new jobs elsewhere. Their descendants are scattered throughout Britain and overseas. The Hebborn name is pretty uncommon in Britain today.  A good proportion of those bearing the name are descended from the Hebborns of Cowley or Iffley.  Another large group can trace their ancestry back to Garsington, the next parish to Cowley. Who knows, the missing link between these two branches of the family may have been contained in those lost or destroyed registers.    

JOHN HEBBORN

See Family Tree Charts A001 and B001