Crosbie is a habitual name from various places in Scotland and England and can also be found in Ireland. There is no single Crosbie Family tree, this name has multiple origins.
The actual name Crosbie in Scotland and England comes from Old Norse, kross and byr, which means cross and farm. The cross refers to a stone cross that was set up by the roadside near a settlement. So originally someone who lived in the farm by the cross took on this name. In Gaelic this was Mac an Chrosáin. In Ireland there is a branch who derived their name from the bard Pádraic Mac Crosáin or Mac An Chrosáin who took the name Patrick Crosbie in about 1583, his Crosbie descendants can trace their name origin to him.
In Scotland the name is common in Wigtownshire and Dumfriesshire, there are places called Crosbie/Corsbie here as well as in Ayr, Kirkcudbright and Berwick. So very centred around the Scottish lowlands and borders where from early times the Crosbie family owned land, some say from before the Norman Conquest. This was Strathclyde Briton.
Portpatrick, Wigtownshire, 1900s
Another branch came over with the Normans and is of Norse descent. Sir John de CROSEBI, a man of Norse origin, whose ancestors settled in Normandy with Rollo, at a place named Corbic in Picardy. The name was then spelt CROSBJ. He came to England and was granted lands which he called Crosbie after himself. From this family came Adam Crosbie (born 1150) who received a grant of land in Annandale from Robert de Brus, 2nd Lord of Annandale. Adam’s daughter, Euphemia, married Robert de Brus whilst her brother, Ivo, is said to have married a natural daughter of Robert de Brus, 1st Lord of Annandale. Several grants of land followed in the Annan and Cummertrees area.
The Crosbies, which ever branch, can all boast many notable people that hold this name. There are no less than seventeen coats of arms, several nobles, a Lord Mayor of London (Brass Crosby, 1770) as well as many locations named Crosbie and evidence of early landownership. They are a very old documented family, for example in 1178 Iuone de Crosseby witnessed a charter by Robert de Bruys to Arbroath Abbey (main image).
Crosbie Towers, West Kilbride, North Ayrshire
There were Crosbies amongst the early settlers in America, here the family did well and now nearly 40,000 individuals in the US have this name. Also in Australia and New Zealand where there was a Crosbie Settlement set up by Thomas Hunter Crosbie who was born in Scotland in 1840 and emigrated to New Zealand.
Crosbie Settlement in New Zealand