John Corbin

Ralph Sprague's younger brother Edward remained at Upwey with his Mother Christian, who later married John Corben.

John Corbin was born in Fordington, Dorset, England a small village near Upwey.

Reports of his death appear to be uncertain.

In the series, "The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England...", and under the entry for Ralph Sprague, stepson of John Corbin, there is this entry "His stepfather, John Corbin, wrote from Upway on 25 March 1651 "I am very sorry to understand that my brother-in-law John Holland shall report ... that you are dead ... but I give God praise that I hear to the contrary" [NEHGR 134:198].". If this is true, then John Corbin was still alive in 1651.

• RESEARCH_NOTES: 1. NEHGS Register, July 1980, v. 134, pp. 194-198, article entitled "Some Sprague Records in Weymouth, Tincleton, and Dorchester, Dorset," by Ruth Sprague Dowty [see notes of Edward Sprague for full transcript from which this partial excerpt is taken]: "...This also mayt be the property about which John Corbin, stepfather of Ralph Sprague, urgently wrote him from Upway on 25 March 1651, "write unto mee your mynd aboout the tenement of yours in Upway being now in the possession of Thomas Murrie. Also I am very Sorrie to understand that my brother in law John Holland shall report...that your are dead...but I give God praise that I heare to the contrary..." Since Ralph had been dead for a year the lease was legally his brother's, if alive. In not, the 1636 document would return the property to the Hayne family. From that letter stems the 128-year-old Sprague/Holland puzzle about which many genealogists have speculated.(14) Corbin's signature as "father in law" has been correctly interpreted to mean stepfather but "brother in law" should not have been then literally since terms of family relationships then were used so loosely. The solution to the puzzle lies in Tincleton's parish records, which begin in 1576: John Holland married Sprague's widowed daughter, Alice. Thus the Holland family has no apparent connection with Christian's own ancestry, as has been thought.
• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Corbin-1794
• https://sites.rootsweb.com/~fordingtondorset/Files2/CorbinFamily.ht...
• History and Genealogy of the Descendants of Clement Corbin of Muddy River ... page 11 GoogleBooks