Hiram Elmer Shorey

29 August 1862 – 29 March 1944

Hiram Shorey, like Paul Harris, was a small town New Englander whose antecedents had come out to America in the 17h century. Several people have been tracking Hiram’s family history in particular George Rogers of Litchfield, Maine.

One starting point for a search were Hiram’s obituaries; in the Chicago Daily News for Friday 31 March, 1944, Hiram Shorey was described as being “aged 82, a Loop tailor for half a century and one of the founders, in 1905, of the Rotary Club”. The Chicago Tribune added that “Mr. Shorey was a merchant tailor from Litchfield, Me.” These suggest that he had been in Chicago since at least 1894 as well as confirming that Hiram was born in Litchfield, Maine ± 1862.

Family tree

The relevant entries were as follows:-

Descendants of Jacob Shorey
Generation No. 1
1. JACOB SHOREY. bapt May 30 1736
married HANNAH COES or CROSS
October 27, 1756 Berwick, Maine Generation No. 2 2. JOHN SHOREY (JACOB 1) born May 21,1758, Litchfield,Me
m. MARY KILGORE. Dec 12, 1779
died Aug 14, 1837, Litchfield,Me.

Generation No. 3
3. HIRAM SHOREY(a) (JOHN 2, JACOB 1) born Mar 6, 1786,
Berwick, Me
m. REBECCA CHADBURN Feb 4, 1814 or 1815
died February 23, 1870, Litchfield, Maine.

Generation No. 4
4. EDWARD SHOREY(b) (HIRAM 3, JOHN 2, JACOB 1)
born April 5, 1835 or 1836 Litchfield, Maine
married LOUISE E. PURRINGTON Sept 15, 1861.

Generation No. 5
5. HIRAM ELMER SHOREY(c) (EDWARD 4, HIRAM 3, JOHN 2, JACOB 1)

born August 09, 1862, Litchfield, Me.
married i OLENA ANDERSON
ii GERTRUDE
died March 29 1944, Chicago, Il

The next search had to be for JACOB’s (1) ancestry.

The patriarch of the family was probably Sampson Shores, born in Buckland Brewer, Devon, England in 1614. Sampson married twice, the first time to Abigail Benson in 1640 in Buckland Brewer where his wife was born. They had a daughter Eunice, but Abigail must have died at or shortly after the birth because about a year later Sampson Shore married Abigail Purchase in Massachusetts. The Purchases came from Dorchester, Dorset where Abigail was born on July 4 1624. The likely scenario is therefore that Sampson emigrated to America immediately after the death of his wife and that Eunice went to be raised by a family member in Devon because she subsequently married Charles Glidden in Bideford in 1658. Meanwhile Sampson working as a tailor, appears in Boston, Mass in 1641 and there he joined the church in January 1642. later becoming a Deacon. With his second wife he raised a new family between 1643 and 1660. In this family Jonathan was the oldest, born in 1643. There were four daughters: Abigail, Susanna, Ann, and Elizabeth, and probably four other sons. Jonathan eventually went to live in Lynn. The IGI gives a further two earlier generations of SHORES, George born 1571 and his father John born 1545, both in Warleggon in Cornwall. There is some doubt about this attribution because a search in Warleggon by a local Rotarian has failed to find any Shores there. However, we can be reasonably sure that Hiram Shorey’s ancestors came from the West Country.

Generation A
A. JOHN SHORE born Before 1545
Warleggon, Cornwall, England Generation B B. GEORGE (John 1) SHORE born Dec 19, 1571,
Warleggon, Cornwall, England Generation C
C SAMPSON (John A, George B) SHORE
born Abt 1614 Devon, England
married i ABIGAIL BENSON
ii ABIGAIL PURCHASE abt 1641
Generation D
D. JOHNATHAN (John A, George B, Sampson C) SHOREY
born April 12, 1643, Boston, Mass
m. PRISCILLA HATHORNE
Jan 15 1668 Boston, Mass
died ? Rehoboth, Mass
Generation E
E SAMUEL (John A, George B, Sampson C, Johnathan D) SHOREY
born Feb 1, 1683, Lynn, Mass
m. MARY RHODES
April 29, 1702 Kittery, Me
died August 18, 1769, Kittery, Me

Generation F
F JOHN (John A, George B, Sampson C, Johnathan D, Samuel E) SHOREY
b. Aug 10, 1704, Kittery, Me
m. i ANNE HODSON
Mar 15, 1725 Berwick
ii MARY CLARK
died < July 1762

Generation G or Generation No. 1 supra
JACOB SHOREY bapt May 30 1736

George Rogers found that John Shorey, a Deacon, had been married twice. The Marriage Records of Berwick (Maine) show a marriage between John Shorey and Amy Hodson on March 15 1725, and the Berwick Birth Records list two children of this union, Amy, baptised May 18 1728 and Sarah, baptised July 19, 1730. A third child, Mary, baptised July 2 1732, was recorded as the child of John and Mary Shorey. This was also true of the fourth child, John, on July 28, 1734. This suggests that John’s first wife, Amy, had died and that he married a woman named Mary circa 1731. The remaining children, Mary born on July 2, 1732 and Jacob baptised on May 30, 1736, were the children of this second wife, Mary Clark. This was confirmed in Deacon John’s will, probated in July 1762 which mentions a widow, Mary who appears in Clark family records too. This gave us JACOB son of JOHN SHOREY and MARY CLARK. The IGI showed Deacon John Shorey, born August 10 1704 in Kittery, Maine, as the son of SAMUEL SHOREY and his wife MARY THOMPSON RHODES. Samuel and Mary married on April 29, 1702 in Kittery, This Samuel was shown as born on February 1 1683 in Lynn, Mass. George Rogers does have difficulties about this provenance.

Firstly, he had found evidence that a soldier called Samuel Shorey had been called home to Braintree, Mass in 1690. As George wrote:

“‘The Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire’ by Walter G.
Davis, Sybil Noyes, and Charles T. Libbey is a very reliable source. It says that the Samuel Shores of Braintree who was a soldier at Piscataqua (Portsmouth, NH) in 1690 and later in Saco, Maine in 1696, is the same man who married Mary Rhodes on 28 April 1702. If it is true that the Samuel who married Mary Rhodes was a soldier in 1690, he can hardly be born in 1683 as the IGI suggests. What is possible is that his birth in 1683 is incorrect.

In fact if we move this date back 10 years to 1673, the whole story is possible. At present this is uncertain.

Historian Basil Lewis, 9 October 2005