The Suffolk lines: Channell, Wright and their kin
The English thread on my paternal side comes through Charlotte Louisa Channell (1866–1952), born in Shimpling, Suffolk, who married Thomas Damery of Cork, thereby making my grandfather half-Suffolk. Behind her lies a dense network of yeomen and farmers within a few miles of Bury St Edmunds, the Channells of Ixworth and Livermere, and above all the Wrights of Lawshall, whose line runs six generations back to Ambrose Wright (1617–1689) (my 8× great-grandfather), born in the reign of James I. Marrying into them come the Symonds, the Clarke of Glemsford, the Ransome of Hartest, and the Ely of Great Whelnetham, whose 1814 will anchors the whole cluster.
A neat coincidence sits here: the Ely line married a Mary Newport, and her father’s will makes “Newport” a Christian name inside the Ely family, a Suffolk Newport wholly unconnected to the White family’s forename Newport in Limerick (Chapter 11). Two Newports, two counties, no link.
Unlike the Cork and Limerick lines, the Suffolk families rest on parish-register compilation and the Ely will rather than a published pedigree, sound and consistent, but register-level, and worth checking against the original Suffolk registers if ever certainty is needed.