This page seeks to document the ancestry of my husbands maternal grandfather.

William Robert Cribb was born in 1905. His mother told him on her deathbed that she was not his birth mother and gave him the names of a couple who could tell him about his birth. For years, mystery surrounded the circumstances of his biological family. He had gone by the name Billy Ventis all his life, but then changed his name to Cribb.

We have established through DNA research that his birth father was named Grieve. Following the patrilineal line leads us back to Saint Andrews in Fife, Scotland. Other surnames on this line include Berry, Nairn, Smith, Brown, Baxter, Wilson, Fender, Thomson, Russell and Smedley. Mainly from Scotland and Devon, England.

Cribb turned out to be his maternal line. Interestingly, paper records, later confirmed by DNA, revealed that the Cribb name did not go back very far, only his mother and his grandfather carrying that name. Our Australian Cribb family has its roots very in the early Hawkesbury Region and one of our ancestors was born in Australia as early as 1795, with at least seven convicts, the oldest arriving on the Second Fleet. Other surnames on this line include Herps, Skuthorpe, Connor, Carlisle, Hewitt, Hall, Starkey, Freeson, Yardley and Edwards.

It was actually a relief not to be descended from James and John Cribb, convicts to Australia, believed to have come from notorious highwayman families in England. However, Jane Starkey’s family may have had close associations with similar scoundrels.

For more information:

• Click on the links in the pedigree shown above to go directly to each ancestors biography page at Wikitree;
• To view a tree showing up to 254 ancestors, including locations, click here ;
• Access a list of Cribb ancestral surnames here;
• If you have a subscription, you can also view the tree at Ancestry;
• The mystery surrounding his birth was solved through DNA research. His ancestry has now been DNA confirmed back to his four grandparents and most of his great grandparents.

Click the links below for more information about his ancestry:

His parents:

• Ancestors of the Grieve family – Elsie’s partner most likely Robert Grieve;
• Ancestors of Elsie Jane Cribb, 1877-1954

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