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.
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. 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, Swansea and even Northumberland.
One relation, Lydia Conibear married quite late in life to Frank Squibbe who was a ligithouse keeper. This was presumably the Bull Point Lighthouse built in 1979, a couple of years before they married.
George was the second son of George Conibear of Georgeham. He was born in 1770 in Georgian Britain. 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.