
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)
THOMAS CORY and SUSANAH (9)
THOMAS CORY. There is a family tree which makes Thomas the child of Samuel Cory and Susannah Harris, baptised 22 March 1677. Since Thomas’s first child was baptised in 1681, this is clearly impossible. It is probably based on the baptismal date of a much younger son Samuel.
Two Thomas Corys were baptised in the Northamptonshire village of Harpole in 1653, around the date we should expect for Thomas. One was the son of Thomas Cory the younger and Elizabeth, baptised on 13 Jan, the other the posthumous child of Nicholas Cory, deceased, and Mary, baptised on 1 July. Since Thomas did not name any of his sons Nicholas and named his first daughter Elizabeth, the first couple is the more likely.
This Thomas was the middle one of five children, and the only boy. The second had an older brother and sister.
The most likely of these Thomases came from a family of yeomen farmers. His father died in 1661-2, when Thomas was only nine, before the birth of his youngest sister.
It must have been a hard struggle for his mother, left with a young family, but Thomas did well. He became a grocer. By the time of his death he had acquired sufficient status in the village to be styled ‘Mr’, equating him with the gentry.
SUSANAH. The wedding of Thomas and Susanah does not seem to have taken place in Harpole, so we presume that Susanah was from a different parish. Her parentage is unknown.
It is likely that she, as well as Thomas, was born in the interregnum following the Civil War, when Oliver Cromwell ruled as Lord Protector. They would still have been young children when Cromwell and his son died, and the monarchy was restored under Charles II in 1660.
The baptisms of Thomas and Susanah’s many children begin in 1681, so we may presume that the couple married not long before this. They set up home in Harpole.
Their first child was John, baptised on 10 April 1681.
Another twelve, followed:
Elizabeth 1 Oct 1682
Mary 21 Nov 1684.
Susanah 10 Sept 1686
Thomas 7 Feb 1687. He is only said to be the son of Thomas Cory, while the other baptisms name Susanah as well. But it is highly likely that Thomas would name a son after himself and, if the conjecture is correct, after his father.
Richard 29 Jan 1690
Mary was buried on 2 Jan 1691, aged 7.
Sarah 12 Nov 1692. Sarah’s burial date is given in the transcript of Cory BMDs as 25 Oct 1692. One of these dates must be wrong.
Another Sarah was born.
Sarah 23 Dec 1693
Ann 29 Jan 1695
Richard 19 March 1695. There is no record of the previous Richard being buried, but we presume that he died. There is a burial for Richard, son of Thomas and Susanah, on 19 March 1696, exactly a year after the second Richard’s baptism. This leads one to wonder if the date is another mistranscription.
Samuel 14 Nov 1697
Hannah 24 Jan 1700
Richard 31 April 1702. There is a question mark against Thomas’s name in this transcription, indicating that it was difficult to read, but there is no other mother called Susanah in the Harpole baptismal register around this time, and it is very likely that the couple would have named another son Richard after the deaths of the previous two.
They raised their large family against the background of momentous events on the national scene. The last Stuart king, James II, had come to the throne in 1685. When his first wife died, leaving two daughters, the king married the fervently Catholic Mary of Modena. The country feared that her baby son James would be brought up in that faith and inherit the throne as a Catholic king. Representatives of both Whigs and Tories sent an embassy to ask James’s Protestant elder daughter Mary, and her Dutch husband William of Orange, to come and rule England and Scotland as joint monarchs in James’s place.
When William landed at Torbay, James fled the country. William III and Mary II were crowned in 1689.
Mary died in 1694 and William in 1702. Thomas and Susanah’s last child was born in the year King James’s younger daughter Anne became queen.
Susanah’s burial may be that of ‘Susanah Cory senior’, on 7 Jan 1709.
Thomas’s burial is harder to locate. His would not be the one in 1720 of Thomas Cory ‘an aged man’. He might be Thomas Mutton Cory, buried 22 May 1728, or Mr Thomas Cory, grocer, on 27 Feb 1731, or less likely, Thomas Cory of Kislingbury on 26 Aug 1728.
If the burial of the grocer is the right one, then Thomas was aged 78. He had achieved sufficient standing in the community to be styled a gentleman, with the title ‘Mr’, which was only used for such men.
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