Who were the parents of Corbett Tew (?-1794)?

Written by Ian Davis. Last updated 7 September 2026.

Background

Corbett Tew and his wife Sarah were raising a family in Shalstone, Buckinghamshire, from the mid-1750s. Neither his baptism nor Sarah’s has been found there, and no Shalstone marriage survives for them. Their eldest child was already born by 1755 and no earlier Tew appears in the register, so the couple married elsewhere and arrived in the parish shortly before. Who Corbett’s parents were, and where he came from, is the missing join between the documented Shalstone Tews and any earlier line.

The established facts are these:

Corbett Tew was buried at Shalstone in 1794.
His wife was Sarah, whose maiden name has long been taken to be Allen but has never been established.
Their children were baptised at Shalstone: Corbett (known as Corby) on 9 May 1755, Mary on 21 Aug 1757, Ann on 14 Jul 1765 and Thomas on 5 Mar 1769.
Our own ancestor William Tew, born about 1752, has no baptism on record; his age fits a birth before the couple reached Shalstone.
The forename Corbett runs in the Coleman family of south Northamptonshire, where a Corbet Coleman recurs at Sulgrave, Litchborough, Chacombe and Maidford, so a Coleman marriage lies somewhere in the near background.

Both of the leading hypotheses reach the same Coleman family: Corbet Coleman of Sulgrave and his wife Susanna, whose children were baptised there - William in 1675, Mary in 1677, Susanna in 1680, another Corbet in 1681, Dorcas in 1684, John in 1686, Martha in 1688, and Isabell on 21 Oct 1691. Susanna, wife of Corbet, was buried at Sulgrave in 1703. Isabell’s baptism is the only entry that names the mother as Anne; every other entry, and the 1703 burial, give Susanna, so the stray Anne is almost certainly a clerk’s slip.

Hypothesis 1 - Plumpton: son of William and Isabella Tew

Corbett was the child of that name baptised at Plumpton on 23 Aug 1726, the son of William and Isabella Tew, and Isabella was Isabell Coleman of Sulgrave, the daughter of Corbet Coleman.

In favour:

He is the only Corbett Tew of the right age anywhere in the records.
William and Isabella baptised three children at Plumpton: Coleman Tew in 1715 and a daughter, Phillipa, in 1721, both of whom died in infancy, and Corbett in 1726. Naming a son Coleman marks Isabella as a Coleman.
Isabella’s father, Corbet Coleman, supplies the forename directly.
The dates fit comfortably: a Corbett born in 1726 would have been about twenty-six when William was born around 1752.

Against:

The link from the Plumpton Corbett to the Shalstone Corbett rests on the forename alone, with no direct evidence.
No marriage of William Tew to Isabella Coleman has been found.

Hypothesis 2 - Whittlebury via Eydon: son of Thomas and Susannah Tew

This is the reconstruction Steph’s father worked out in the early 2000s. Corbett was the son of Thomas and Susannah Tew of Whittlebury, Susannah being a Coleman of Sulgrave. The deeper line runs from Edward Tue, who married Ann Linnell at Long Buckby on 12 Oct 1654, through their son William Tew (born about 1657), who married Hannah Tibbuts at Hinton in the Hedges on 1 Jun 1676 and raised children at Eydon, down through a later generation to Thomas and Corbett; the Coleman side he carried back to a Robert “the Shepherd” Coleman, born about 1565 at Chacombe. This William of 1657 is a different and much earlier man than our own William.

In favour:

The Eydon family is well documented. William married Hannah Tibbuts on 1 Jun 1676, and their children were baptised at Eydon: Edward in 1676, Anne in 1678, William in 1681, Hannah in 1683 and Thomas in 1686.
Thomas and Susannah Tew were real people at Whittlebury. Thomas was buried there in 1723 and Susanna, his widow, in 1744, and their daughter Mary was baptised on 24 Nov 1717, married John Newman in 1736, and was buried as Mary Newman in 1745.
There is a plausible Coleman candidate in Susanna Coleman, baptised at Sulgrave in 1680, who was Isabella’s sister and so carries the same forename.
An unsourced probate note ties a Susannah Coleman to John Newman, the man Mary Tew married; if it is right, Susanna Tew was that Coleman daughter.

Against:

No Corbett was baptised at Whittlebury. The parish registers and the bishop’s transcripts for the combined parish of Whittlebury and Silverstone have been searched around both 1709 and 1727, and turn up nothing. The parents and their daughter Mary are plainly in the register, but the son is not.
The reconstruction disagrees with itself, giving Corbett’s birth as both 1714 and 1727, his father as both John and Thomas, and Susannah’s husband as both William and Thomas. The 1727 is almost certainly the Plumpton baptism of 1726 a year out.
No marriage of a Tew to a Coleman has been found at Whittlebury, where the account places it around 1710.
The work leaned heavily on the IGI, which mixed genuine parish entries with unverified submissions.

Hypothesis 3 - Paulerspury: son of Thomas and Susannah Tew, with a different pedigree

This hypothesis comes chiefly from the jtew136 tree on Ancestry, which keeps the same Whittlebury parents but gives them a quite different ancestry. On its reading Thomas Tew was born at Paulerspury in 1680, the son of a William Tew of Towcester (born in 1658, “son of John Tue, gent”), with brothers Edward (born 1677 at Paulerspury) and Gabriel (born 1710 at Poundon). Corbett is placed as one of several children born between about 1715 and 1723, alongside William, John, Gabriel and another Thomas, and Susannah Coleman is a different woman again, born at Foscott in 1688 to John and Elizabeth Coleman.

In favour:

It cites a real document: the administration of Thomas’s estate in 1723 was granted to Susannah his widow, which corroborates both the 1723 probate and Susannah’s status as his widow.
It sets the family within a wider network of Tews, at Paulerspury, Towcester and Poundon, and later at Twyford in Buckinghamshire, where the brother Gabriel founded a cluster that ran for generations.

Against:

It runs onto the same obstacle as Hypothesis 2, since no Corbett was baptised at Whittlebury.
Its Susannah Coleman does not carry the Corbett forename as the Sulgrave Susanna of 1680 does. The tree is also unsourced and inconsistent about her, elsewhere making her a daughter of Corbett and Susannah Coleman instead.
Its deeper male line, through William of Towcester in 1658, is a direct rival to the Eydon William of 1657 in Hypothesis 2, so even the ancestry it offers is contested.

A possible convergence of Hypotheses 1 and 2

The two leading hypotheses may not be as far apart as they look. The Eydon son William, baptised in 1681, could be the same William Tew who married Isabella Coleman and had Corbett baptised at Plumpton in 1726. If he is, the documented Eydon line joins the Plumpton reading, and the forename comes down through Isabella rather than through Susannah.

If Isabella’s sister Susanna Coleman, baptised in 1680, is the Susannah who married Thomas Tew, then two Tew brothers married two Coleman sisters, both daughters of Corbet Coleman.
The geography raises no difficulty: Plumpton lies only a few miles from both Eydon and Sulgrave, and a widow, Elizabeth Tue, was buried at Sulgrave itself in 1704.
What is still missing is any marriage of William Tew to Isabella Coleman, and anything that actually places the Eydon William at Plumpton.

Assessment

Hypothesis 1 is the strongest. It begins from a baptism that names the parents, and the forename, the naming of a son Coleman, and the ages all sit together. Hypotheses 2 and 3 share the same unproven join - no Corbett was baptised at Whittlebury - and differ mainly in the deeper pedigree and in which Coleman woman they choose.

Next steps

Order the two relevant wills from Northampton Record Office. Thomas Tew’s of 1723 (Whittlebury, number 112) may name his children and so show whether a son Corbett existed. Susannah Tew’s of 1746 (Whittlebury, widow; the reference reads “05 Apr”, which needs checking) is the probate behind the John Newman note and may name her Coleman kin.
Find the marriage of Corbett Tew and Sarah. It did not take place at Shalstone and must predate about 1755; it would give Sarah’s maiden name and, in all likelihood, the parish Corbett came from.
Find a baptism that names Corbett’s own parents.
Find the baptism of William Tew, born about 1752.
Search for a marriage of William Tew to Isabella Coleman around 1710 to 1714, and for any evidence that places the Eydon William of 1681 at Plumpton.

Records

The Whittlebury and Silverstone parish registers and bishop’s transcripts are online and have been searched, with no Corbett Tew found.
The Sulgrave and Plumpton parish registers hold the Coleman and Plumpton-Tew entries above.
Northampton Record Office holds the two Whittlebury wills listed under next steps.