This website is largely the result of the meticulous work done by Hardwicke Holderness (1879-1965) who, after he retired from the British Army, settled in Essex and began the detailed research which produced a folio of 375 laboriously handwritten pages. He lived before the age of the internet, yet managed to accumulate a staggering amount of data and anecdotal material which has formed the basis of this family tree. Our family comes from the south-west area of Lincolnshire around Bourne, covering the villages of Obthorpe, Thulby, Semperingham, Pointon and Swayfield. We have affiliations to the McNeills, Macfarlanes, McNabs and Taylors of Scotland and Cowards, Hardwickes and Calverts of England. Two teenage boys were sent out to New Zealand in the mid 1800's to "make their way". Robert Fitzroy Holderness, Hardwicke's father, settled in Christchurch, married Constance Coward, a grand-daughter of Dougald Macfarlane, Waterloo veteran, and fathered 12 children. One of Hardwicke's brothers married a daughter of a McNeill chieftan and the lines from these affiliations can be traced all the way back to the early kings of Ireland.