notes by P John Partington

JONATHAN CORBETT  (c. 1736 - 1811)

Our earliest proven Corbett ancestor is Jonathan, born in about 1736.  He married twice:  first, in 1760, Henrietta Corbett (probably his first cousin: born in about 1738, the daughter of Nathan and Anne of Tytherington), at St Peter’s, Castle Precincts, Bristol.  The couple, who were apparently living at Winterbourne, had six children in the course of seven years:  Anne Maria born in 1760, Nathan in 1762, William in 1763, Jonathan in 1764, Nancy in 1765, and John in 1767.   Of these children, five died in infancy.  Henrietta herself died on 8 February 1769, less than two months after her youngest child, John, and was buried three days later at Yate – leaving her husband with just one living child, Nancy.  Two years later, on 31 May 1771, Jonathan married Hannah Hall (“of Little Sodbury”;   born 1746, the daughter of Richard and Anne née Russell) at Little Sodbury.   The couple had three children:  Sarah Ann baptized in 1772, Henrietta in 1773 and Jonathan in 1775.  In about March 1808 Brinsham Farm was purchased by Jonathan from John Savage of Bristol, “of whom he and his late father had previously been tenants for upwards of eighty years”.  Jonathan died in 1811, still at Brinsham Farm;  he was buried at Yate on 9 February.  Hannah was buried there on 18 April 1826, aged eighty.

THE CHILDREN OF JONATHAN  (c. 1736 - 1811)

Jonathan’s first child by his first marriage, Anne (Maria), was baptized on 28 December 1780 at Yate, and buried there just two days later.

Jonathan’s second child by his first marriage, Nathan, was born in 1762, and buried at Yate on 29 November that same year;  and his third, William, was born in 1763, and buried at Yate on 6 June that same year.

Jonathan’s fifth child by his first marriage, Nancy, was born in 1765 and baptized on 29 September.  She alone of Jonathan and Henrietta’s six children survived infancy.  She married John Neale, a “yeoman of Goose Green”, at Stt Peter & James Church, Bristol on 6 May 1784.   She inherited all her mother’s marriage settlement, which had come from Nathan Corbett of Tytherington’s estate.  John and Nancy had eleven children, including John Corbett (Neale) who married his cousin Tryphena Corbett, a daughter Henrietta (who married Edmund Shipp), and another daughter, Sarah (who married Edmund’s brother Samuel).

.Jonathan’s sixth child by his first marriage, John, was born in 1767 and baptized on 30 August the following year.  He died, however, on 17 December that year, being buried at Yate three days later.

Jonathan’s first child by his second marriage, Sarah Ann, was baptized at Yate on 9 August 1772.  She married James White, “gentleman”, of Old Sodbury, at Little Sodbury on 23 June 1803.  They lived at the Cross Hands, Old Sodbury.

Jonathan’s second child by his second marriage, Henrietta, was baptized in Yate on 21 November 1773.  On 28 August 1799, still in Yate, she married Joseph Shipp.   (The Shipps were solidly middle-class, but the Corbetts were a cut higher, and a descendant speculates that had Henrietta not been pregnant – Ann was christened eight weeks after the wedding – her father would not have permitted this marriage.  Henrietta’s signature on the wedding record is more bold and beautiful than any other in Shipp family records.)   The couple had ten children:   Ann Corbett baptized in 1800, Jonathan in 1801, Hannah Maria in 1802, Robert in 1804, Amelia in 1805, Henrietta in 1807, Richard in 1808, Rachel in 1810, William in 1812 and Caroline in 1816.  Henrietta died in 1822, aged forty-nine, and was buried at Yate on 5 December.

Jonathan’s third child by his second marriage was Jonathan, baptized at Yate on 24 September 1775.  A “gentleman of Yate”, he married his second cousin Sarah Francomb (daughter of Stephen Francomb and Tryphena née Corbett) at Yate on 16 March 1797.  They had at least three children:  Tryphena baptized in 1798, William Jones in 1800 and Jonathan in 1804 (details below).   In 1851 Jonathan and Grace were living in Yate with their daughter-in-law Grace:   Jonathan was a “farmer of 160 acres”.  Jonathan died in 1852 and was buried on 1 June at Yate, aged seventy-five, while Sarah lived to the age of ninety-three and was buried at Yate on 14 December 1861.

THE CHILDREN OF JONATHAN  (1775 - 1852)

Jonathan’s first child, Tryphena, was baptized in 1798.  She married her cousin John Corbett Neale in Yate on 7 December 1816.  They had at least five children:  Matilda Corbett born in 1817, Robert in 1819/20, Jonathan in 1820/1, Alfred in about 1827, and another Jonathan in about 1831.  In 1851 John Corbett and Tryphena were lving in Yate with their son Robert and his family.  John Corbett died on 30 May 1853 and was buried at Yate.  Tryphena died on 21 May 1876 and was buried at Yate on five days later.

Jonathan’s second child, William Jones, was baptized in Yate on 1 June 1800.  He apparently died aged twenty-two and was buried in Yate in 1822.

THE CHILDREN OF JONATHAN  (1803 - 1827)