The Listers of Shibden Hall

This is the Lister family tree, showing all Listers that are known to have owned or lived at Shibden Hall. Not all siblings are shown. Orange boxes indicate ownership; the sequence of ownership is top to bottom, left to right.


The first Lister of Shibden Hall, Samuel Lister (b.1570), didn't own it, but came to live there when he became the guardian of his nephew John Hemingway (b.1602) in 1615, on the death the same year of John Hemingway's aunt (Jane Crowther) and father (Robert Hemingway). John himself died, still under age, in 1616. John's surviving sisters Sibil, Phoebe and Martha inherited Shibden. Samuel's eldest son Thomas (b.1599) married Sibil in 1619, bringing Shibden into Lister ownership.

The estate then passed down through two further generations: both Samuel, born 1623 and 1673. The latter inherited Shibden in 1694, dying without an heir in 1702.

Ownership then passed from Samuel (b.1673) to his second cousin, James (b.1673), who moved into Shibden in 1709. From here on the line to Anne is almost direct, passing from father to son, brother to brother. Legend has it that Anne, rather than her father, inherited from her uncle James. This may not be exactly true; Anne's father and Aunt Anne definitely had a life interest in Shibden, sharing the estate income with Anne. Whether or not they each actually inherited a third of the estate is unclear. It is clear that it was not until 1836, when both Aunt Anne and her father died, that Anne took complete control.

When Anne died in 1840, ownership passed to Ann, but only as a life interest: the estate was entailed to John Lister of Swansea (b.1802), Anne's second cousin once removed. This branch of the family was descended from Capt. Jeremy Lister's uncle Thomas (b.1708) who had emigrated to Virginia, presumably one of the "Two of my ancestors went there in the last century. To import wood. Not very successfully, they both died." Thomas arrived in Virginia in 1733, and died there in 1740. His son William (b.1734) was returned to England.

The last Lister to live at Shibden died there in 1933. He was the John Lister who first broke Anne's diary code. Fearing a scandal, he hid the diaries and never published the coded content.

The last female Lister to live at Shibden was, appropriately, marvellously, named Anne. She never married.