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Searching for Ancestors A Personal Search for One's Storey Ancestors by Geoff Storey This is the story of one couple's search for their ancestry. I hope that it will inspire other British Storeys to include their own accounts : My wife Penny and I visited Westmoreland and the Lake District this week, armed with George Browne and a lot of faith in the Cumbrian Record Office. It was an intensely personal week. Working back from George Browne's research with long hours spent in Westmoreland's County Archives at Kendal was relatively easy. By so doing we managed to put names, farms, and occupations to father and son back to 1513 ( including any brushes with the law and conflicts with both their feudal Lords and with their neighbours). Prior to that all English Church records virtually cease, and one has to rely on the rare and occasional mention in Court and property records. The country is diverse. Beautiful and historic Kendal, Windermere, and the Roman Wall. Learn to know the land and perhaps, as I did, our group will begin to understand the men and the women from whom they are descended. Browne began in 1745, but the first Richard Storey arrived in the vale of the Troutbeck in the 1670, having left his home and family in Old and New Hutton and in Preston Patrick, in the foothills of The Pennines just South of Kendall. He moved from the slightly softer hill country just up from the Eden Valley to the beginning of the lakes and foothills of the Cumbrian Mountains. In Troutbeck they were to prosper, gathering together numerous properties. Troutbeck is not a village as such, but a string of hamlets edging up the Troutbeck. Perhaps a hundred homes, all ancient, gathered in a score of hamlets. The atmosphere of our quest was marvellous, from reading the monuments to past Storeys, to meeting the priest by chance in Jesus Church (the C of E names its' churches for Saints, never for the Great Intermediary, such as in this exceptional case - perhaps the Hard Men of the valley required the most urgent intercession of all !), and the priest joining us in their pew for all our Storey ancestors gone before, to those of the present; to being physically able to trace all their former homes, all still standing. We visited the Huttons, and in Troutbeck itself we stayed next door to the first Storey property of Browhead (with Richard's son Thomas' initials and the date in which he built the new house, 1692, proudly picked out in paint . Browhead was still in the fertile middle-earth of Troutbeck. The vast mountain acres of Long Green Head under the 1500 foot Kirkstone Pass were daunting. Their acres might have been hardly limited, but the sheer hard work need to not only live but to prosper and become a Gentleman must have been daunting. ( Under the pre-1500's feudal system a man was free if he held his land by money rent or military tenure, and could thus bear arms. Other lesser humans owed labour service on the lands of others) By 1500 the descendants of our free Storey farmers were termed Yeomen. A Yeoman who prospered and became a part of the County hierarchy was a Gentleman, from which class were drawn the Knights of The Shire. By the early 1700's other farmers were owing rents and service to my ancestor. George Browne's Townend, near Browhead, is a perfectly preserved example of a gentleman yeoman's home of the time. After Browne's death (his family lived in that same house since the 1500's), by a fortuitous combination of circumstances, the house was kept on hold in a time-warp until sold to the National Trust, and is now on view to the public. His family was much intermarried with ours. Curiously enough, we were also able to trace my mother's family, the Knipes, which I formerly believed lived only high in the Pennines, to Troutbeck. They arrived before the Storeys.   2