Hi Tony,
Everyone gets into a tangle with the Corkills, including me. Even Constance Radcliffe who wrote a published history of Maughold farming families confused some of the Corkills of the Ards with their neighbours at Ballagorry Mooar.

Joe Corkill started off thinking that his ancestor Thomas Corkill (married to Margaret Kinrade) who went to Ramsey was the son of Robert Corkill b.1811 (who he thought married Cath Kermeen), and was the son of William Corkill and Catharine Kelly who I wrote to you about yesterday. You had that William married to Elinor Christian in your tree.

However after Carol looked up Ramsey records for fathers' names we (think we) sorted them out correctly. See this message on the thread 22/2/2007:
www.isle-of-man.com/genealogy/messageboard/manx_archive_2.pl/md/read/id/512818

This confirmed Thomas Corkill's father as being Christopher b.1787, the youngest son of John Corkill & Jane Skillicorn, so nothing to do with William C & Cath Kelly or their son Robert b.1811, apart from being cousins.

Nor was there any explanation as to why Joe originally thought his ancestor Thomas was the son of Robert b.1811 and that this Robert married Cath Kermeen.
- It was probably because someone found that they had a son Thomas born near the end of 1840, and Christopher's son Thomas was bapt in Maughold on 18 Oct 1840, so they were almost exactly the same age. Having left the IOM, and not knowing how many Thomas Corkills there were, it would be an easy mistake for a descendant to make.

Thanks for checking that 1803 Robert Corkill. I'm glad you can exclude him, because it is more likely that your Robert was older rather than younger when recorded in censuses/burial, because people were inclined to remove a year or two as they got older. Yes, I noticed "Robin" but Robins were sometimes recorded later as Robert, but I agree he would be less likely to be your one than Robert b.1806.

The Robert b.1808 son of John Corkill & Joney Joughin died soon after birth, and they had another son Robert in 1810. Father John was the eldest son of much-mentioned John Corkill & Jane Skillicorn. I nearly included Robert bapt 29 Jul 1810 in the list, but thought he would be unlikely to be four years younger than given in records? I don't know what happened to him, but there was a possible marriage to Elinor Fargher of Malew. I didn't follow them up in censuses to look at ages, or to exclude him from marrying Cath Kermeen.

I still think that William Corkill & Elinor Christian are the most likely couple to be your Robert's parents, and especially with the relatively unusual name of Dorothy as one of his siblings, when we know Robert and Cath had a daughter Dorothy, but William & Elinor are proving hard to trace.

Carol might still have the Maughold parish register films at her local FHC to look up the names of the marriage witnesses - I'll ask - but it is really clutching at straws because the names might be meaningless.

Sue