Fay Sampson’s Family History
This site is a work-in-progress. There is a massive amount to cover. I have included both male and female lines, and some go back 30 generations. Keep coming back for more.
I have numbered the generations working backwards from my own as (1)
NICHOLAS CORY and ELIZABETH WARDE (12)
NICHOLAS CORY. Tracing the most likely ancestors of Thomas Cory, who fathered Samuel Cory in 1697, leads us back to Nicholas Cory of Harpole, the Northamptonshire village where this family is concentrated.
He appears to be Nycholas, son of John Cory and his wife Alice, christened at Harpole on 28 April 1549. He was the youngest of five children, but one brother had already died before Nicholas was born.
When he was two, Mary I inherited the throne from her young half-brother Edward VI. After a reign marked by religious bloodshed, she was succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth I in 1553. Most of Nicholas and his wife Elizabeth’s lives were lived in the Elizabethan era.
In 1567, when Nicholas was eighteen, his father was said to be John Cory of Upton. Upton is a small village two miles west of Harpole, closer to Northampton.
We do not know what Nicholas’s occupation was, but since at least one of his sons became a yeoman farmer, it is likely that Nicholas was, too. He was probably descended from a line of farmers of some substance.
ELIZABETH WARDE was married in the parish church of Harpole. It is not yet known whether she was born in Harpole, or moved there before her marriage. The IGI gives her birth date as about 1555, but this is probably estimated from the date of her marriage. She may well have been older than twenty.
The couple were married in Harpole on 11 June 1575.
Five children were born to them:
Nicholas, baptised 20 Dec 1577
Alice, 13 Nov 1580
Thomas, 1583
Robert, 26 May 1585
John 24 Jan 1588
There is no record of any of these children dying in infancy.
There are more baptisms for the children of Nicholas and Elizabeth Cory in the early 1600s, but they are almost certainly the grandchildren of this couple. Their son Nicholas married Elizabeth Ashbee in 1601.
It is not certain whether Nicholas lived to see those grandchildren. There is a possible burial for him on 21 Aug 1591. But there are other Nicholas Corys older than him. One of those seems more likely to have died than Elizabeth’s husband, who would have been only 42. No other plausible burial has been found in Harpole, so it may be that he was buried elsewhere. Nor can Elizabeth’s burial be identified in Harpole. Perhaps, like Nicholas’s parents, they moved to Upton. Nicholas may have taken over his parent’s farm.
NEXT GENERATION: 11. CORY-HARRYS
PREVIOUS GENERATIONS: 13. CORY