I may have found him in 1861 but he vanishes after that.   I wondered if Michael had dropeed his first name and used Richard.   I have an ancestor who was baptised Philip John but the last time he used Philip was on his marriage documents.  From then on he appears in every census and on his children's birth registrations as John.   I think I may have found Michael Richard on the 1861 census as Richard CORBEY aged 17, sawyer, born Plymouth lodging with a family named Roberts at Cottage, Cornwood.  It is transcribed as CORBER on FreeCEN.   Mary Ann Roberts, widow, is head of household and I noticed that Michael's brother, Daniel, married a Sarah Roberts born in Exeter.  It might be worth investigating her ancestry to see if she is any relation to the Cornwood Roberts family.   I can't see a Richard Corbey  born Plymouth in 1851 or a possible Birth registration on FreeBMD but I have only searched briefly.    May be a red herring, of course.   Joy   ________________________________ From: Shirley Ireland <s.ireland345@btinternet.com> To: devon@rootsweb.com Sent: Monday, 13 January 2014, 12:57 Subject: [DEV] Help Needed Hi, I need some help on a Micheal Richard Cobey, born in Plymouth in 1845, went to the USA in 1865, but dont know  if he came back to England or not, the trail goes cold, if some one can through any light on this I would be grateful. I have tried, but nothing. Regards Shirley Ireland (Cobie ) ------------------------------------------ The DEVON-L mailing list is co-sponsored by GENUKI/Devon ( http://genuki.cs.ncl.ac.uk/DEV/ ) and the Devon FHS (http://www.devonfhs.org.uk/ ) List archive for Devon can be found at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/index/DEVON/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to DEVON-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message