Wombwell Relationships Explained

Richard Wombwell Senior seems to have been one of three recorded brothers, all born in Newport, Essex, as listed below:

Richard Wombwell 1736–
James Wombwell 1739–
Thomas Wombwell 1744–1768

The parents of the three children were John Wombwell (1712-1784) and Mary Hare (1712-1752), both of whom were born in Clavering, Essex, and who would be Hetty Jane Owen's x4 great-grandparents. 

The Wombwell heartlands in Essex

Richard's younger brother, James Wombwell meanwhile married Sarah Rogers in Braintree, Essex in 1760. They had nine children, of whom the two youngest were George (senior), born in 1777, who went on to found the famous menagerie, and Zacharias, born in 1780,  the father of George Wombwell junior, and Richard Wombwell and Maria West's next door neighbour in Stoke Newington.

All of this seems to add up quite logically, and it means that Richard Wombwell was a first cousin of George and Zacharias, and the uncle of George junior.

In concluding this journey back into the Wombwell past, it would seem that the parents of John Wombwell were:

John Wombwell (1686-1741), also of Clavering, and Elizabeth Twynne (1690-1714). 

John in turn was the son of Richard Wombwell (1660-1723) of Clavering, who married Mary Brown (1662-1737). 

These would be Hetty Jane Owen's x5 and x6 great-grandparents respectively. It would seem that as the generations rolled by, the Wombwells were simple farming folk of the Essex region, until as the eighteenth century drew to a close, one or more of their number began to look south towards London, and the opportunities that the great metropolis might have to offer them.