Rectory Lane Cemetery, Berkhamsted

Edward Corbett Parker (795)

1850 –08/05/1912

A gentleman

• Melanie Hilton

Plot 795 Edward Corbett Parker (1850-1912)

For someone with a distinctive name, a foreign birthplace and who married into the minor aristocracy, Edward has proved difficult to pin down.

He was born c.1850 in Brussels to British parents whose names have not been discovered and in 1861 he was a boarding pupil at a small school in Charlton, Dover.

On 28 August 1868 he married Georgina Louisa Alice Graves, daughter of the Hon. Henry Graves and Henrietta (née Wellesley) at St Mary-in-the-Castle, Hastings.

17 July 1869 when Henrietta Florence Edwina Ruth was born the couple were living in Boulogne, France which is where Georgina’s family had been living for some time. At this period it was a very economical place to live for upper class families whose incomes were somewhat more stretched than they once were. The baby was baptised in Carshalton parish church in August. Edward was described as a “gentleman”: that is, he was not an employee and had no occupation.

On 29 August 1870 The London and China Telegraph carried the announcement of the birth on 5 June of a son to the wife of Edward Corbett Parker Esq.at Sarawak. No other details were given and it is not certain that this is the right Edward Corbett Parker, although the coincidence of two “gentlemen” (as the use of Esq. implies) of that exact name seems unlikely.

In 1873 Edgar was born in Boulogne and Mary in 1879 in South Kensington.

Mary Ida Isabel was born in 1878 in Kensington. (She was to marry her cousin, the 6^th Lord Graves, Baron of Gravesend, in 1903).

In 1881 the family lived at 6, Selbourne Road, Walthamstow and the Kelly’s Directory 1890-99 for Merton Surrey records Edward Corbett Parker at 1, Nursery Villas, Morden Road.

1891 census record shows him as a lodger in Stockwell, married and “employed”. The place of birth, Brussels, makes it certain this is the right man, although the “employed” is puzzling.

1 September 1896 The Cork Examiner announced the birth of a son to the wife of Edward Corbett Parker at the London and South Western Bank. Again, with no other information it cannot be certain that this is our man.

Edward died at Berkhamsted Rectory 8 May 1912 aged 62, presumably whilst on a visit.