Welcome to ‘Our Casbon Journey’!

This is the first post of what I hope will be many. Our Casbon Journey is primarily a family history blog, dedicated to everybody with the Casbon family name. I’m including Casban and Casben as closely-related variants, since many of them share common ancestors with Casbons.

According to Forebears.com, as of 2014, our surname is the 594,917^th most common in the world. There are approximately 365 people with this surname, most of whom live in the United States (286) and England (75). That would put us between the Asiatic Lion and the Northern Right Whale if we were an endangered species![1] Forebears.com also says there were only 49 Casbans (Indonesia!, England) and 31 Casbens (Australia) in 2014.

Most, but not all of us, are related (i.e., a connection through common ancestors can be shown). Even if not related, many of us can trace our ancestry to Cambridgeshire and nearby parts of East Anglia in England. Most of my research has involved my family line, which can be traced to the vicinity of Meldreth, a small village near Cambridge, as early as the 16^th century. Along the way, I’ve encountered other branches from nearby locations.

Here’s a diagram of my Casbon ancestors going back to the early 18th century. Earlier than that, it gets more difficult to prove who is descended from whom.

(Click on image to enlarge)

My personal ancestry journey began in the early 1990s. after my father received an offer in the mail to purchase The World Book of Casbons, along with a family crest and a mailing list of other Casbons. He bought the book and started contacting Casbons located in the USA, England, and Australia. I got involved a short while later, bought some early genealogy computer software, and started doing research on my own. I’ve been at it off and on ever since.

My goal is to share what I have learned, in the hope that some of my enthusiasm will rub off on my readers, and that they will want to learn more about their origins. I’ll be writing a lot about my branch of the family, but I intend to write about other branches as well. I hope others will feel welcome to contribute comments and posts about their own families, whether we are related or not. Who knows, maybe we’ll find a connection!

Part of my inspiration for this blog has come from meeting other Casbons on the Casbon Family and Casbon Family History facebook groups. Since there are so few of us, it has been great way to find others outside of my immediate family. I hope these groups will continue to grow, so we can keep up to date with the various Casbon ‘clans.’

So…let the journey begin!

[1] “Endangered Species Statistics.” (2015). Statistic Brain http://www.statisticbrain.com/endangered-species-statistics/ [accessed 7 Sep 2016]