Synchronicity!

When I first started researching several years ago, I got sidetracked onto a line that was only very indirectly associated with the family. I was interested in a man called Cotterell Corbett, who built the farmhouse that my grandmother Isabella grew up in. According to my mother, who has visited the house, Honeybourne Manor Farm House itself was built in 1831 (this is carved into the guttering). On the lintel of a door into the dining room is the following verse: "Fools build houses for wise men to live in - Thus runs the ancient proverb. This house was built by Cotterell, and now belongs to Robert." [The Robert mentioned would have been Robert Fletcher]

 The Cotterell Corbett of Honeybourne Manor Farm was a son of Michael Corbett and Rebecca Ashwin and was a second cousin several times removed of my Grandmother. I got a bit carried away and at one stage checked relationships and was getting things like "so and so is the uncle of the husband of the sister of......." Quite ridiculous really! I put it all aside and got back to more relevant research along the original Sheaf lines. Or so I thought....

Last weekend, after following up some more of the Fletcher/Smith family both Mum and I (who are in different states might I add) came up with John Smith marrying Muriel Corbett in Lower Quinton in 1708. Bells started to ring wildly and I searched through the data base and found that this was a marriage I already had discovered in the irrelevant Corbett line! Suddenly the woman who was the aunt of the cousin of the sister of the uncle blah blah blah was my 6 x great-grandmother! And the lesson from all this? If you do the research, keep it! Who knows how it might tie in.

Muriel Smith

A breakthrough! For ages I have put off investigating the family of Muriel Smith, who married Richard Fletcher, because of the fact that she was a Smith! Not that Smith is anything but a fine and honourable name, I was just daunted by the idea that it would be difficult to sort out. Anyway, after some email correspondence with my mentor (thanks Mum!) I took the plunge. I had known for a while the name of Muriel's father was Robert, but other than that - nothing. Some research into old wills led me to Preston on Stour, and the parish registers there confirmed her father as Robert and her paternal grandparents as John and Muriel. Her father Robert married Elizabeth Cleeve at Whitchurch in Warwickshire and then it appears they moved to Charringworth near Ebrington. It was here that Elizabeth, Muriel's mother, died in 1764. Muriel was only about 3 at the time. I cannot find another marriage for Robert - I am almost certain he remained single for the rest of his life, 'til he died in 1797. His will leaves everything to his daughter Muriel, and then to her five children. To my delight he inserts a phrase that her inheritance is to be hers alone and that her present nor future husbands not have anything to do with it! The only missing piece in the story of Muriel is her baptism. I have looked closely through the images of the Preston on Stour registers to no avail. I have done searches for her baptisms at both Whitchurch and Ebrington but as that is not throwing up anything useful in the transcriptions I will have to look at the images for those too. If that is not successful I will have to think again!