A History of the Ferebees in England and America This web page is an online archive of notes and documents to aid people researching the history of this family. If you have any comments, corrections, or additional data to share, please contact me at: hferebee at*webtv.net. This page is under construction! New information is being added to these pages on a weekly basis.as research in England progresses (*note - you must substitute an @ to the address).

NEW ITEMS 19 April 2004 - New material in the heraldry section concerning arms on tombs. 12 Oct. 2004 - New data from the Close Rolls in the 1300s and 1400s sections. 19 Dec. 2004 - New data from the Patent Rolls in the 1300s and 1400s sections. 5 April 2005 - New 1700s wills from Norfolk Co. in the Virginia section. 15 Jun. 2005 - 1700s Ferebee men of unknown ancestry living in the Albermarle in the NC section. 1 Nov. 2005 - Important new data about John Ferebee the immigrant at Northampton Co. VA 1660 till 1664 in the Virginia section. 22 Jan. 2007 - A new item that reveals that John deFereby who signed the Magna Carta was a priest, in the Before 1300 section.

NOTE If you are researching this surname you are aware of its many spelling variants. This page includes; Feerby, Ferby, Furby, Ferrabee, Feriby, Ferriby, Ferryby, Farabee, Feraby, Ferrebie, Veriby, etc. To my dismay, I've found 36 variant spellings. This web site does NOT include the surnames Ferrensby /Ferringsby, Frisby, or the Farnaby family of London and Sevenoaks, Kent. These are unrelated families. If you are researching a female with the given name (first name) Feraby or something similar, this is variant spelling of the name Phariba and she is NOT related to this family.

INTRODUCTION - OVERVIEW This web page is the result of research into the ancestry of the Ferebee family of the Albermarle area of North Carolina and Norfolk, Virginia. The primary focus is on the history of this family in 1600s to 1700s America and their forebearers in England. All the material that I've found in English records before 1700 has been posted here to aid other researchers. It has been divided into geographic and temporal sections, but both catagories should be explored since much material seldom appears in both areas. This is a work in progress and therefore little attempt has been made to explain the primary source material and place it into a narrative or context. The paragraphs below are a speculative effort to give a brief overview of this family's history. This is a working hypothesis and should be considered only as a guide to the data on this site. There is no doubt that the family took it's locative surname from the villages of North Ferriby(Yorks) and South Ferriby (Lincs) on the Humber, but which is unclear. Occurences of the surname before 1300 are limited to the counties of York and Lincoln. My theory is that the surname is monogenetic in origin, but proof is impossible. Local documents of the 1200s refer to village natives as "de suthferiby" and "de northferiby" and not as "de Feriby". The two earliest mentions of people thus named are a c.1170 deed donating land to a Lincs. priory naming Hugo de Feriby, a kinsman of the powerful Orresby and Beauchamp families, and John de Fereby who in 1215 signed the Magna Carta in opposition to King John. Documents show that from ca. 1300 they were a mercantile family living in ports along the Humber and at York and that many of their sons became clerics. Some of these clerics held important administrative posts from the reigns of Edward II through Henry VI. Depositons in a 1360 lawsuit concerning the inheritance of land in Barton names "Thomas de Feriby, aged 53 and more, son of Walter, grandson of Walter whose father the said John de Feriby gave the lands ..." These documents show that a family with holdings near South Ferriby were using this surname in a hereditary fashion starting circa 1230. The small number of people with the surname Ferriby is shown by the two large scale tax levies of the 1300s made by Edward III in the 1330s and Richard II in the 1370-80s, only several families in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire appear. During the mid 1300s members of the family settled in Kent probably to be closer to their administrative jobs at Westminster. In the mid 1500s a branch of the family moved to Cirencester, Gloucestershire. From here they moved to other areas in southern England and to London. Another branch lived in the area near Doncaster Yorks from ca.1400 till the 1800s, and through the 1700s a family remained at Barton-upon-Humber. The 1881 British census lists 203 households of this surname living chiefly at; Lincs, Yorks, Gloucs, Berks, and greater London area. The 1880 U.S. census lists 470 households with this surname, the majority were living in; NC, VA, SC, WVA, and TN. The 1870 North Carolina census lists 17 white and 25 black or mulatto households.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Listed below are links to the various parts of this web page.

RESEARCH LINKS Ferebee - Russ Myers Homepage. This site contains an abstract of all the genealogical material in Annie Adelia Ferebee's "Ferebee Family" 1937 (1956). This work traces the descendants of Thomas, son of John Ferebee (1635-c.1708) of Norfolk, Virginia. The site also contains data on many other Tidewater Virginia families.

Farabee - These web sites contain material on the Farabee families of 1600s Delaware, 1700s Pennsylvania, and 1800s Ohio, Indiana, Davidson Co.,NC.

Ron's Furby Family - A web site that explores the history of the Furby, Ferby, Fereby family in England. It has a database of Furby, Ferby, Fereby, etc. entries from the IGI and interesting notes about branches of this family around the world.

A puzzled Ferebee peering up the family tree.