Group Administrator:
Ray Isbell - Email:
isbell2@hotmail.com
- Email:
Izheforeal@msn.com
Project Surnames
Isabel, Isabell, Isabelle, Isbell, Isbill
Project Background
The family name of Isbell dates back at least 700 years and, by some accounts, predates the Norman Conquest of 1066. It has been spelled Isbell since the 1300s (and since 800 A.D. by some accounts and 43 A.D. by others).
Johannes (John) ISBELL, who lived in Yorkshire in 1379, represents the earliest surviving documentation of an English Isbell whose name was spelled as we spell it today.
Previous to 1379, the surname in England is found as Isabelle, Ysabelle, and Isabell. (Dictionary of English & Welsh Surnames (1901) by Charles Wareing Bardsley, p. 420.)
GENEALOGY OF THE ISBELL FAMILY (1929) by Mary Scott, page 11: "It is said that the first Isbell came into England with William the Conqueror."
page 216: "....the Isbells of England were descendants of William Isbell, who came over from Normandy with William the Conqueror."
All evidence indicates that the surname was pronounced "Isabell" in earlier centuries, regardless of spelling, since Isbell was the more popular spelling of the girl's name in Medieval days also.
The name was almost universally spelled Isbell in seventeenth and eighteenth century England and Colonial America. The spelling Isbill evolved among descendants of John Miller Isbell, who died in Monroe County, Tennessee in 1853 but also appears as the name of a Canadian family such as the one which produced musician Herb Isbill. The name Isbill also appears in England since the 19th century and is thought to have evolved from Isbell.
Hiram Isbell died around 1900 in Cross County, Arkansas, and his descendants spell their name Isabel. Ezekiel Isbell, born in 1804, has many descendants in Alabama who spell their name Isabell as well as Isbell.
The first Isbell in America was Robert Isbell who came from England to Salem, Massachusettes by 1634. His descendants are well traced for the most part and documentation still readily at hand for retracing them through public records.
The Isbells of Virginia are another story. Mass destruction of courthouses and records throughout the South during the Civil War renders it far more difficult to construct pedigrees from public records like we can from records in New England. The records surviving in the South offer much in the way of circumstantial evidence of relationships, however, so genealogies of the Isbells of Virginia heretofore have been largely based on circumstantial fragmentary records and family names and are replete with the sorts of mistakes inherent in such genealogical methods. This is where DNA testing is breaking new ground.
Sandy Isbell (or Issabell) came from England to Gloucester County, Virginia by 1655 and John Isbell came from England to Gloucester County, Virginia by 1664. Whether either of them had children is undocumented; however, William Isbell was on record in 1699 in King and Queen County (formed from New Kent, originally York, adjoining Gloucester), as was John Isbell in 1702. When King William County was organized in 1702, the Isbell property lay in the new county. The property lay next to the Waller estate, Enfield. Again, documentation is lacking to prove their relationship to one another nor whether either man had children, but their business dealings and associations with one another in a parish of but a few thousand people is enough circumstantial evidence to prove they were related. One John Isbell shipped goods and may have been a passenger on a ship from Bristol, England, to Virginia in 1700.
Past researchers and family historians have published or distributed family trees based upon fragmentary records, theory, and oral tradition, some good, some not so good. Some of the more accurate family trees include those outlined in Joan Cervantes’ book, BOUND FOR THE PROMISED LAND (1992), and in VIRGINIANS by John W. Pritchett as well as Pritchett’s SOUTHSIDE VIRGINIA GENALOGIES.
NOTABLE SOUTHERN FAMILIES by Zella Armstrong has a well documented account of the family of James Isbell of Orange County and Albemarle, as does the book REYNOLDS-.HUGHES-TURNLEY-ISBELL by Rubyn Reynolds Ogburn. HISTORICAL SOUTHERN FAMILIES by John Bennett Boddie traces the descendants of George Isbell, son of William and Ann Dillard Isbell. AMERICANS OF GENTLE BIRTH AND THEIR ANCESTORS (1903) by Hannah Pittman contains the family of Benjamin and Lettice Hickman Isbell.
The goal of DNA testing is to prove or disprove relationships given in some of these previous works and to help researchers to develop new theories. So far it has proven that all the Isbells in the South are indeed related. As more detailed tests are administered to participants, we hope to learn more about the Isbell family tree.