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 PAINE and ELIZABETH BALES (9)
THOMAS PAINE fathered children in the village of Great Brington from 1701 to 1711. This makes it likely that his own baptism is the following:
Baptism. St Mary the Virgin, Great Brington.
1678 Nov 3 Thomas son of Henry and An Pain.
Great Brington is a Northamptonshire village 5 miles north of Harpole, where we find many of our early Cory family. Within it lay Althorp, home to the Spencer family, where Princess Diana was born, and where she is buried.
Thomas was the second of five children, and the only boy.
Four years before Thomas’s birth, Henry Pain was listed as having one hearth in the 1674 Heath Tax, and was exempt from payment. This means that Thomas grew up in an impoverished family.
He became a labourer.
The next time we hear of him is the following baptism.
Baptism. St Mary the Virgin, Great Brington.
1701/2 Feb 24 Elizabeth Bales daughter of Thomas Paine and Elizabeth Bales.
A note accompanying this says “Bastard father of Noebottle”.
Nobottle is a hamlet in the parish of Great Brington, three miles north of Harpole. We find the Paines living here in successive generations.
This was just before the death of William III and the accession of the last Stuart monarch, Anne.
ELIZABETH BALES. We have been unable to find more information about this older Elizabeth. She appears to be unmarried when she bore the younger Elizabeth, but we have been unable to find her baptism.
Nor have we been able to discover what happened to her afterwards. We have not found a marriage or a burial
The younger Elizabeth’s baptism is followed by a sequence of more baptisms for children of Thomas Paine “& his wife”. Nowhere do we find the children’s mother named, nor have we found a marriage for Thomas Paine.
Baptisms. St Mary the Virgin, Great Brington.
1704/5 Mar 22 Henry
1706/7 Feb 18 Charity
1708/9 Feb 13 John
1711 May 27 Mary
Thomas was buried only a year after the last baptism. He may still have been in his thirties.
Burial. St Mary the Virgin, Great Brington.
1712 Oct 15 Thomas Paine
We find two burials in Great Brington after this for widows named Paine. In 1745, we have the burial of Mary Paine, “a poor widow”, and in 1775 of Alice Paine, widow. Since we would expect Thomas’s wife to have been around 1680, the first of these is more likely.
NEXT GENERATION: 8. CORY-BALES
PREVIOUS GENERATIONS: 10. PAINE