JOSEPH CORBETT, Providence, Webster Co., Ky., was born at Fourstones, Northumberland Co., England, September 22, 1829, a son of Joseph and Mary (Elliot) Corbett, both natives of England. Joseph Corbett, subject's father, was educated and married in England, where in early life he learned the blacksmith's trade, which he afterward followed in the town of Fourstones, with the exception of the last ten years of his life. He died in 1864 in his eighty-second year. He served for a time in the English militia. Both he and wife were devoted members of the Church of England. Our subject, at a very early age, commenced learning the blacksmith's trade in his father's shop, and at the age of twenty-one years he left home and went to Newcastle-on-the-Tyne, and was employed in Robert and William Hawthorn's locomotive shops, adjoining George Stephenson's shops, the inventor of the first railway locomotive engine; there he worked for one year. He then went to work in Abbot's shops, at Gateshead, for one year, in the blacksmith department, and was next employed in the Central Railroad shops, Gateshead, and there he remained until July 1, 1854, when he immigrated to the United States. After arriving in this country he went to Pittsburgh, Penn., and obtained work in a steamboat shop, and while working there was employed by the Hon. John Bell, of Tennessee, to work for him at his mines in Crittenden County, Ky., to keep his engines in repair and do the work necessary for the mines in the blacksmith department. He worked for Bell three years or more; in 1859, he came to Providence, Webster Co., Ky., where he opened a shop of his own and remained until 1867, manufacturing buggies, wagons, plows, etc., and horse-shoeing. He then went back to Crittenden and Union Counties, where he was engaged in the coal business until the fall of 1875, when he moved to a farm in the northwestern part of Webster County, which he had bought several years before going on it. There he followed his trade, in connection with farming, until the fall of 1879, when he sold the farm and moved back to Providence, where he opened a blacksmith and wagon shop, and has since been doing a thriving business. He also owns a well-improved farm, one mile east of Providence. He was married, in 1861, to Miss Mary R. Henderson, a native of what is now Webster County, Ky., who died in 1862. She was a devoted Christian. Mr. Corbett's second marriage was May 17, 1868, to Mrs. Esther E. Melloy, a native of Manchester, England. Her first husband, Samuel Melloy, a machinist, erected the first locomotive that ran on the Lebanon Valley Railroad, in the Reading locomotive shops, Pennsylvania. Mr. and Mrs. Corbett are parents of seven children, five of whom—four sons and one daughter—are living. Mrs. Corbett had two sons by her former marriage. Mr. and Mrs. Corbett are members of the Church of England. He is a Democrat.
Source: J. H. Battle, W. H. Perrin, & G. C. Kniffin. Kentucky. A History of the State. Louisville, KY, Chicago, IL: Battey, 1885. Page 1030.