Hi Susan,
Sorry about the delay in getting back to you. This is the first time in weeks that at least one person in this house hasn't been ill with one lurgy or another.
The parentage my Richard Dight Wilment has been an irritation to me for a few years now. He was baptised in Curry Mallet in 1776 as Richard Wilment, no mention of Dight, and no parents were named. There were a couple of branches of Wilments in Curry Mallet at the time, but most are either fully accounted for at that time or disappeared entirely. The possibilities as I see them are:
1) He was a legitimate son of an unknown couple, and his mother married a Dight after his father died - I thought this for a while, but I know now that this is not correct (at least, there is no evidence that this was the case).
2) Richard Wilment and Susannah Dight had my Richard illegitimately and married when he was 7 - I have several problems with this theory. Illegitimate children are baptised with their mother's name, so he should have been baptised as Richard Dight if this was the case. Also, why marry 7 years later? I don't think this option holds water at all. Incidentally, Richard and Susannah's marriage, and the birth of Susannah in 1795, both appear in the Dight family bible; there is no mention of young Richard.
3) Richard Wilment had an earlier marriage and Richard Dight Wilment is the son of that marriage. I haven't been able to find either another marriage for Richard, or the death of a woman who could have been his wife.
4) A Wilment woman, possibly Richard senior's unmarried sister Elizabeth, had young Richard as an illegitimate son. This is my preferred theory but I haven't been able to prove it. Elizabeth Wilment died in 1798, still unmarried at age 58. Dight could have been his father's surname.
I'm sure there are other possibilities (there were other branches of the family but they seem to have left the village - maybe one came back?) but these are the ones I have considered. I'm sure there is a relationship between your Susannah Wilment and my Richard, but I don't think it is as close as brother and sister. There weren't any other Wilment children baptised in Curry Mallet for at least 10 years either side of Richard Dight Wilment's birth, so I can't even slot him into an existing family. It really is very frustrating.
I'll be only too happy to share any breakthroughs, but I have to say I'm not hopeful. I do have an extended Wilment tree on Rootsweb (Statham tree). Have you looked at the Symonds family website
wasfu-man-symondspedigree.blogspot.com which has some information about the Dight family?
Rebecca
