Richard Corbin

The son of powerful planter Gawin Corbin and his second wife, Jane Lane, Corbin received an education appropriate to his class from private tutors at home, then the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, and probably finished his education in England.[3]

His father married three times, and his first and third wives were daughters of members of the Governor's Council. However, his well-connected first wife, Cathereine Wormeley, bore no children before her death. This man was one of the two sons borne of Gawin Corbin's second marriage. His mother, the former Jane Lane Wilson, was the daughter of Captain John Lane of York County and widow of Willis Wilson, and this man would rename his main plantation "Laneville" to honor her. His full brother John Corbin (1715-1757) would inherit the Portobago plantation and lands in several counties, but held only local offices. Jane Lane also bore three daughters, of whom the eldest, Ann, would survive her first husband, Isaac Allerton, and remarried Rev. David Currie of Christ Church Parish in Lancaster County, Virginia. Her sisters Alice and Felicia never married. His half brother (son by his father's third wife, Martha the daughter of Col. William Bassett) Gavin (d. 1760) also may have served as a burgess or this man's ward before his marriage and siring a daughter who inherited some of his property. The younger Gawin's widow Hannah Lee Corbin refused to formally marry her paramour, lest she lose her right to manage half of her husband's lands during her lifetime, after which this man inherited them. Richard Corbin also had two sisters or half-sisters who married burgesses, but who did not bear children who survived. Jennie Corbin married John Bushrod of Westmoreland County and Alice Corbin married Benjamin Needler, Clerk of the Governor's Council.[4]

In July 1737 he married Elizabeth Tayloe (1719-1784), daughter of burgess and planter John Tayloe I of Mount Airy Plantation in Richmond County, Virginia. they had four sons who reached adulthood: Gawin (1740-1779), John Tayloe Corbin (1745-1794), Richard Corbin Jr.(b. 1751), Thomas Corbin (b. 1755) and Francis Corbin (1759-1821). Their daughter Elizabeth married Carter Braxton who would sign the declaration of Independence, although her sisters Alicia and Letitia never married. [7]

Corbin died at the Laneville plantation at which he was born, but was initially buried at the family's Buckingham plantation. The graves were later moved to Christ Episcopal Church in Middlesex County.

Virginia has erected a historical marker to commemorate Patrick Henry's journey to now-disappeared Laneville.[8] The John D. Rockefeller Library of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation his papers and those of his descendants.[9]