Gosh, you know an amazing amount about our family. Are you one of us?
This is my speculation about who is who in the Colebatch family in the Ludlow parish records:
I think the Cobage family in the Ludlow records is the missing link that explains where Edward, William etc came from - and possibly even our John.
It doesn't look like our name, but say it, and it sounds similar. The priest, James Crowther (rector, 1604-25) would have written down what he took the name to be. The Cobage family occurs in the parish records only in his term, between 1609 and 1625. When the Rev. Thomas arrived, the spelling changed to Colbatch. William and Joan's first child Alice, baptised in June 1625, was spelt Cobage by Crowther, but their three later ones (after Rev. Tom arrived) were spelt Colbatch.
If I am right, that greatly expands the number of Edward's children.
My conclusion is that Edward was probably the first Colbatch to settle in Ludlow, at least in the time of the parish records, probably in 1596/97. If Thomas had been born in 1596, then he might have been the eldest child, and baptised before the family migrated to Ludlow.
Those baptised in Ludlow were
1598 Edward Colbach
(possibly the Edward, son of Edward Cowlach who was buried on August 21, 1599, since no other Cowlach appears in these records. Or it may be the Edward Colbatch who sired children with Elinor and Anne in succession in the 1630s).
(nb date of christening is Mar 5, 1598, not 1597 - the parish records seemed to update the year not on Jan 1, but only when they started a new page).
1600 William Colbach
(quite likely the William who married Joan, and later Katherine, and later served as church warden and possibly as Alderman Will).
a gap of years follows - maybe his first wife died, somewhere out of Ludlow, since there is no record of her burial, and he later remarried.
1609 Margaret Cobage (d. 1611)
1611 Richard Cobage
(quite likely the Richard Colbatch who married Joan and had all those children from 1640 to 1653 - how is it that they had the only child to appear in Ludlow records of christenings from 1646 to 1661?)
1613 Alice Cobage (d. 1619)
1614 John Cobage
AHA!!! Could this be our ancestor John Colebatch, who married Elizabeth, sired children at Chetton between 1653 and 1670, and was buried there in 1688? Not the son of the Rev. Thomas, as we had thought, but his youngest surviving brother?
Quite possibly. As far as I can see, unlike all his brothers, he does not reappear in the Ludlow parish records.
As the youngest surviving son, there might have been less room for him in the family business, which put more pressure on him to make his own career somewhere else, as our great-grandfathers did in coming to Australia. It means he would have been in his 40s and 50s when he sired his children, which is unusual but not implausible.
At the very least, he has to be a prime suspect.
1618 Daniel Cobage (d.1623)
And the last Cobage entry is in 1625, when the old priest baptises Alice, daughter of William and Joan.
In 1641, the parish buried Alice Colbatch, daughter of William.
I am convinced that Cobage was just Crowther's spelling of Colbatch. It doesn't occur before he arrived, or after he handed over (and in the case of William and Joan, it is pretty clear that Cobage and Colbatch are the same people).
The pieces of the jigsaw fit together perfectly. I say, lock it in.
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Topic: Chetton Parish Records (Read 2865 times)