Hi,

Many thanks for the thought. Anything is possible, but in my research, there have been a number of interesting conclusions and two are quite surprising.

From the many stories told to me by my mother when I was little, it is clear that the family must have had a very considerable interest in its own past, though broad storylines rather than fine details, dates, etc were all that survived in my time, which is understandable unless something is written down. For example, descent from the Christians of Milntown was regarded as definite, as was a family connection to Sukie Corrin who married Dominique LaMothe.

The first breakthrough was when I found that Henry William Corrin (born 1803) had married Charlotte Chapman. My mother's brother, Harold Christian Joughin Brown was named after (a) Harold Towers where the family lived, Christian (father's mother) Joughin (Mother's mother. For some reason Harold detested his middle names, and chenged his name by deed poll to CHAPMAN. As I checked the details, everything fitted.

When I checked the 1793 marriage of the 1769 Henry Corrin, the witnesses included Sophia LaMothe, and it was unusual to have a woman as a witness in those days. The other witness was Stanley Tyldesley. I soon realised that Stanley was the brother of Henry's mother, Ann Tyldelsey, who had married William Corrin in 1742. He had a sister Suzanna, who married Dominique LaMothe in Liverpool in 1763. Go back two more geneations (with wills, properties and so on confirming the trace) and a Henry Corrin m Amy Stevenson in 1707. Sadly trace of the Stevenson line had been lost, BUT, when I looked at Amy's grandmother, Issable Christian of Milntown !!!

What was also extraordinary was that my mother always said "one branch of the family came from Galloway in Scotland", but had no more details. Lots of Manx families do have a Scots link, and I assumed in might come from the Brown side, but Amy Stevenson's mother was Ellin Gallowey, who m Capt John Stevenson in 1676, so I suspect that in the 200 years between the Galloway marriage and the story being told to me, that "the Galloway family" had been transformed into "the family from Galloway". It is very likely that the Galloway family did originate from Galloway in any case, so it may even be that the original line was "the Galloway family from Galloway".

There was also a legend of "one of your ancestors wore a suit of armour". When I read the 1683 will of Amy Stevenson's grandfather, Major General Richard Stevenson, it spoke of "my armor and arms, my bow and quiver".

When I began researching I had regarded the legends as pleasant and enjoyable but other than Milntown and Sukie, far fetched, but the extraordinary discovery is that the biggest discrepancy so far has been a marriage that was out by one generation.

Greetham was a complete mystery to us, but from this thread, the Tyldesley-Greetham connection has surfaced, so it seems that there is a rational explanation for that, even though the reasoning was unknown to my mother.

One danger in this research is trying to make the "facts" conform to a preconceived vision or wish, and that is something I have been very careful of, and I have aimed to find back up data, such as wills, property, witnesses and so on.

What does amuse me is that if anyone researches my ancestry in say 200 years, they may be a bit puzzled by the girl's names. Amy, whose name goes back to Amy Stevenson of 1683, and is my Great x 6 grand mother, but until they sort out each link in the chain, it is going to be a nightmare for them. Our older daughter is Anastasia, and there they are really going to have to dig, and are likely to try the wrong direction to begin with.

When we knew that Elena was expecting our first little one, we went for a drive to celebrate and started discussing names. If it was a girl we wanted a name that reflected Elena's RUSSIAN background, but she wanted a name that was common to both our families, which promised to be difficult as few Russian names are common in the West. We found there was one link, Ann/Anna, but E said she had always liked Anastasia, at which point I said that if it was of any help, I had an Anastasia in my family tree, so at that point we had a name !!!

In 200 years time, a researcher will probably curse the pair of us, for the obvious place to look for an Anastasia is in Elena's tree. We can get back a bit over 100 years there, and there are no Anastasia's in that period, but you have to go back to around 1270 on my side to get the right answer.

many thanks

Robert