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Thanks, Wexflyer! Yes, that would make sense. Rather like the bishop's transcripts for parish registers.

I have returned to this after many years, and there are still a number of gaps in the Dalby records, though I've managed to sort out the Bonistons and Lawtons. Maybe I'll need a day trip to Beverley to trawl through the registers!

Particular questions about the 3 Feb 1808 burial of Margaret Warner. If this was indeed Margaret, daughter of David Dalby, she would have been born in 1765 but I've found no baptism record. This was before her mother Elizabeth, a Roman Catholic, had been baptised in the Church of England on 2 Nov 1766. I don't know if that is relevant. Margaret's sister Ann was baptised on 11 Oct. 1766, and her brother John on 18th May 1765. All this doesn't seem to leave much time for Margaret to have been born in between John and Ann, though I don't have their actual dates of birth, of course!
Another question is when and where did Margaret marry Samuel Warner, and where did he come from? The only marriage I can find was 20th April 1800 at St.Mary's, Lambeth, LONDON!  Not quite as unlikely as this may sound, as from the early 1800s her younger brother Octavius was living in London where he was working as a customs officer.

So - I have particular lookup requests - birth/baptism of Margaret Dalby in Howden or Asselby around 1765, daughter of David and Elizabeth. And some information about Samuel Warner - was he a Londoner or a Yorkshireman? I haven't found any mention of him anywhere near Howden. He'd have been born mid-1700s and died late 1700s-to1800s. Could be that he was living in east Yorkshire all the time, but somewhere that the records haven't yet been digitised.

Thanks for the suggestion, JJ. Yes, I have also corrected Wikipedia items. But this one is not Wikipedia. However, the historian is now writing a whole new article for publication in the Canadian art world, with updated and corrected data, so there's no need to do anything. There are still some unanswered questions, of course, but we're confident that the facts we have are now correct.   

Thanks, Molly! Have gone quite a bit further now. John Brown emigrated in 1881 with Louisa Ann Evans, granddaughter of William Willey, a prominent Sheffield cutler who had moved to London in the 1840s. After his death in 1853 his daughter Mary inherited his shop at 21 Fish Street Hill in the City of London (close to the Great Fire Monument). She married Evan Evans who continued to run the shop as a tobacconist/newsagent which also sold cutlery. Louisa was their daughter. But although John Brown had been living in Sheffield for several years, I've found no Sheffield connection between the two families.

John Brown left a family in Sheffield (including a son, Frank, born in 1882 after John had already  sailed to New York). After John left, his wife Caroline and their 6 children moved from Plumpton Street to Court 5, 8 Cambridge Road, Heeley - sounds to me like much smaller and cheaper accommodation. Caroline petitioned for divorce in 1894, and John Brown and Louisa Ann then married in Camden, New Jersey, in 1895. Frank eventually joined him in America and managed the organ-building business after his father's retirement.

I have a John Brown (born Hunslet 1852) who was an organ builder, employed by the London-based organ building company Henry Willis & Sons in the 1870s. But John and his family lived in Sheffield throughout the 1870s. Was there any connection between the organ building company in London and Henry Willis steel manufacturers in Sheffield? Were they owned by the same Henry Willis? Or did the London organ building company have a branch office in Sheffield?

John Brown then emigrated to the USA in 1881, initially working for Hilborne Lewis Roosevelt, an organ builder in New York (this was a non-political cousin of US presidents Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt). He later, in about 1885, set up his own organ building company in Wilmington, Delaware.