Conibear

The name, it is suggested, comes from middle English and means rabbit wood or grove. There are certainly plenty of rabbits on Morte Point!

The Conibear name, with its various spellings, is very concentrated around the Bristol Channel, North Devon, Somerset and the south coast of Wales. My research suggests that the South Wales occurrences originate from North Devon.

On this site the spelling is standardised to Conibear, but in the historical documents Coneybear, Coneber, Conibeer and Conibeare are all used. The relative that found himself around the River Tyne naturally became a Caniber!

Distribution of Conibear name in 1881

Our Conibear Ancestors.

Our Conibears seem to be a branch that moved from Georegham to the south of Woolacombe to Morthoe just to the north. They went from cordwainers and agricultural workers to bakers and shopkeepers before becoming hoteliers.

It was George Conibear, a shoemaker, that moved to Mortehoe to marry Elizabeth ("Betty") Lang. My reconstruction of the family groups descended from these two is ongoing, but you will see that, as well as staying in Mortehoe, some of them spread to Ilfracombe, Combe Martin, South Wales and even Northumberland.

You can see a chart of some of his descendants at the bottom of this page.

The Decendants of George Conibear the Shoemaker (1770-1853)

George was the second son of George Conibear of Georgeham. He was born in 1770 in Georgian Britain. Lots of Georges!

For context, this was the same year, James Cook was logging the east coast of Australia, the American Revolution was brewing, and James Hargreaves patented the spinning jenny.

George moved to Mortehoe and married Elizabeth ("Betty") Lang where they brought up their family.

George and Elizabeth had five children I know about. He lived a long life making shoes, dying in 1853 at the age of 83. Here's a summary of his children and their families:

George Conibear (1792-1846)

George's first son, George, was also a shoemaker. With his wife, Mary Bennett, they had four children.

• Mary Conibear married John Vicary but died within a year of marriage. Maybe due to complications of childbirth or pregnancy? She is buried in Saint Mary's churchyard in Mortehoe with her parents.
• Samuel Conibear was a blacksmith and married Elizabeth Hearn from Littleham. They also kept the Chichester Arms for a time around 1871. Samuel and his family seem to have been very succesful in business and marriage. Two daughters, Mary Conibear and Anne Conibear married into the Gammon family: farmers from Shaftsborough just to the east of Mortehoe. The family also had Barricane House and Farm in the centre of Mortehoe that was developed into a borading house for the growing tourist industry. Youngest daughter, Eva Sarah Conibear, was also in this business after marrying Reginald Turner who had the Torketh Hotel in Northam. Middle daughter, Elizabeth Conibear, married her first cousin, William George Conibear Sanders, who was an auctioneer from Ilfracombe. The Sanders family established the very successful "Sanders and Son Ltd" auctioneers based in Barnstaple but covering all of North Devon. I think the company still exist, but they are not involved in livestock auctions which was their bread and butter in the early 20th century.
• Harriot Conibear married William Irwin Sanders, an auctioneer in Combe Martin. Their first son, William George Conibear Sanders, was the auctioneer I mentioned above. His brothers were all in the auctioneering business apart from the second son, Alfred John Sanders who was an apprentice baker then joined the Royal Navy as a cook. The daughter who survived childhood, Ada Mary Bennett Sanders married Albert Edmund Dark, a jeweller and optician.

 Elizabeth Conibear (1794-1877)

Elizabeth Conibear married William Bennett, a mariner. They had just three children that I've found:

• Eliza Bennett died in infancy.
• George Bennett married Mary Anne Thorne and moved to Cardiff where they had a family of at least six children.
• Sophia Bennett had an illegitimate son, William Bennett, but then went on to marry John Butler, who was probably a widower, about ten years later. They had a large family, some of whom stayed in North Devon and some moved to Pembrokeshire. Their daughter, Mary Butler married late in life to Philip Gammon who's first wife was her second cousin, Mary Conibear, the daughter of Samuel Conibear above.

John Conibear (1797-1857)

This is our line. John Conibear and Jane Richards are the 5x Great Grandparents of the current generation being born in the 2020s. They lived in Mortehoe and had six children we know of:

• Eliza A. Conibear married William Harding. They had three children, William John Harding who died as a child, and Mary Josephine Vickery and Edith Mary Nicholls who both moved to Swansea and married there. Their parents also moved to Swansea, but later in life.
• Joshua Conibear and Ann ("Annie") Phillips had ten children! He was a stone mason. They brought their family up in Ilfacombe, presumably because that's where the work was, but moved back to Mortehoe late in life. One interesting snippet about Joshua was that he was fined for his daughter Emily's non attendance at school.
• John Conibear also moved down to Ilfracombe. He was a sawyer and married Ann Snow. They had nine children and lived in Ilfacombe most of their lives until the beginning of the 20th century when all but the eldest children moved to the Bristol area.
• James Conibear is intriguing. My theory is that he was a mariner because he appears up in North Shields near Newcastle-on-Tyne. Here he married Ann Caragan, a girl from Manchester, and had three children: James Noble Conibear, Joseph Michael Conibear and Mary Annie Conibear. In the 1871 census he is listed as a Waterman and he and his wife are cohabiting with a Master Mariner, Joseph Noble and his wife, Mary. James disappears after this, but his children seem to adopt the family name Noble and end up living with Mary Noble as their mother. Both children, that is, except Joseph Michael Conibear who pops up in 1881 at Uncle George Conibear's Baker's Shop in Mortehoe! 
• Which brings us on to said George Conibear who married Ann Dyer. They had just two children, Eliza Ann Conibear who married Samuel John Yeo and William George Conibear who married Rose Ellen Ellis. We're into living memory territory now because we've heard anecdotes about these people around the dinner table. But, I'll come back to this branch so as not to interrupt the flow.
• Lydia Conibear was the last daughter of John and Jane. Lydia was a dressmaker and married quite late in life to Frank Squibbe who was a lighthouse keeper. This was presumably the Bull Point Lighthouse built in 1979, a couple of years before they married. Sadly, Lydia died of breast cancer a little over a year after they were married.

Mary Conibear (1803-1823)

Mary Conibear died aged 20. We can't find out why because it's before civil registration was introduced.

James Conibear (1806-unknown)

We can't find any information on James Conibear. The assumption is, he died young.

George and his first three generations of descendants.

• Legend:
• Subject
• Daughter
• Son
• Spouse
• Duplicate