If your family name is Gabbitas, please e-mail your family tree or as much as you know about it, and I will include it on the site.

Here is my tree as far as I have taken it : gabbitas.paf
You will need to install the Family Search Personal Ancestry File program on your computer to view this. You can download it here. (Free registration is required)

A bit of history

There seem to be several different versions of the origin of the surname Gabbitas. For myself I am inclined to think that it could be of Greek origin, from the surname Agabitos.
I have not yet met enough Gabbitass from outside my own group to be certain but the most pronounced physical characteristic in my family is our noses and it wasn't until I spent a holiday there, that I realised that many Greek people have exactly the same characteristics.

The earliest mention of Gabytus (the medieval spelling) which I have found is a John Gabytus who sat on a post mortem jury in Newark about 1490.
It is interesting that the first names in the family at that period look rather foreign.

The family seems to have settled mainly in the villages around the river Trent between Newark and the Humber although someone sent me a tombstone engraving from Brough-under-Stainmore church yard in Westmoreland for a Thomas Cabetis who was Sheriffe of Westmorland 1652-1659. My informant G.M.B. Ward FRCS told me that there were decendants called Gabitas living around Crosby Ravenworth. There are a number of mentions of the name in 'Guide to the Nottinhampshire County Records Office' and in 'County Records of the 18th Century.

There were two brothers in Newark at the time of Cromwells seige. One was called Original Gabytus. They were tailors and the sons of a butcher at Darlton. There was also a town crier of Newark and a vicar of Walesby St Edmunds about the time when it was necessary to be very quick to change from Protestant to Catholic and back as required by the current monarch.

When the enclosure acts were passed many people lost the possibility of maintaining themselves. Up to that time medieval wills show that many people were self sufficient from their land holdings and also had a trade.
For instance I have a will (1647) of Robert Gabitas of Darlton, Notts described as a carpenter but the inventory of his goods shows that he had the grinding stones for making flour. Wheat, peas and barley in the barn, pigs, chickens etc. Another will, also from Darlton is of William Gabbitas bricklayer (1717) who had a similar list of farming related things together with 2 acres of fallows and a hay stack.
After the enclosures much common land was bought for very little and people had then to find work to feed themselves. The people from the villages started to move into the towns, became miners in the coal mines feeding the factories, but some like my ancestors continued to work the land as gardeners, grooms agriculural labourers.
The railways arrived about 1840 and for the Gabbitas family in my line there was a scattering. To London, Yorkshire, emigration overseas to the United States, New Zealand and other countries.
I hope that other Gabbitas families will help me to make this web site as complete as possible.
Send details to