Adam CORRIE ²

  Notes:

Adam was the second son of John Corrie, and was presumably born at Barncleugh Farm in the Parish of Irongray. The family moved to Southpark in his uncle William's Senwick Estate when he was nine years old. Adam joined his uncle's lacemaking business in Wellingborough when he was 15: he was a successful businessman, and eventually inherited his uncle's business and property in Scotland and England after William's daughter Jane died in 1828. He bought much land in England including Wilby Manor near Wellingborough. In 1818, thinking that political troubles were coming to England as they had in France 30 years before, Adam sent his son John to America where he bought 10,000ac on the Wabash River in Illinois (at 1s/acre) so that his father could emigrate with his family. However, prospects in England improved so Adam instead provided land and finance for three of his brothers who emigrated and became pioneer farmers. Adam's son John inherited the land when his father died in 1846, and gifted it to his Illinois relatives in 1850.

The Corrie family had been associated with the Cheese Lane Congregational Chapel in Wellingborough for many years, but Adam resigned in 1812 over the introduction of an organ into the services, and established the Salem Chapel instead (where he was buried).

Adam and his wife Penelope Bailey (qv) had nine children who survived infancy, and 27 grandchildren. Their eldest son John, the only one of the three sons to outlive his parents, inherited his father's property including Senwick House, where he died in 1874, and assumed the role of head of family after his father died in 1846: John's only son Adam John did not have any sons so Senwick was sold. Their next son William may have accompanied his older brother to Illinois in 1818: he married Mary Farren in New York, had one daughter Penelope who married her cousin George Nicholls, and died when he was 44. Their eldest daughter Peggy married Joseph Keep, a blacksmith and landowner in Wellingborough - their only son Adam inherited Wilby Manor. Adam and Penelope's youngest son Adam was a lace manufacturer in Wellingborough; he had two children with his wife Eliza Ewer, and died when he was just 37.

Their next five daughters were Mary who married George Nicholls, a surgeon in Bourne in Lincolnshire; Penelope who married Rev Frederick Custance, Rector of Colwall in Herefordshire; Matilda who did not marry and lived with her parents and then with two of her married sisters; Caroline who married Rev Robert Jarratt, Rector of Bourton-on-the-Hill in Gloucestershire; and lastly Maria (qv).

PCC: Adam Corrie PROB11/2046 dated 18-12-1846

Additional sources:
J.E. Corrie (1899). Records of the Corrie Family. London: Mitchell and Hughes
Victoria County History of Northamptonshire (1937)
C H Chase et al. Chase family history - unpublished compilation
Corrie Family Papers: https://digital.library.illinois.edu/collections/bf086710-5127-013d-4eee-02d0d7bfd6e4-8

Adam married Penelope Chester BAILEY, daughter of Thomas BAILEY and Ann YEATES, on 19 Nov 1792 in St Peter Cornhill, London.¹ (Penelope Chester BAILEY was born in 1771 in Padbury, Buckinghamshire,^{6 7} died on 12 Nov 1852 in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire ⁸ and was buried in Salem Chapel, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire ⁵.)