The Royal Ancestry of Thomas Graves of Thurcaston

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As mentioned in my side tabs, one of my passion projects is documenting and "collecting" interesting Royal Descents of various people and families, partly out of my own interest in the subject, and also out of the hope that someone will find their own ancestors amongst this blog, and may learn some new information about them through it. A Royal Descent uses so many different sources of information to prove them that to see them written out and following the process of the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS, henceforth) can be tremendously useful for teaching people and helping them see potential avenues for further searching in their own research.

That is what the following series is going to do: we will start with and go in-depth into the ancestry of Thomas Graves, probably born around 1811, and baptised in 1815, in the parish of Thurcaston, Leicestershire. On the 1841 census, he was living with his young family in Leicestershire and his occupation was "Ag Lab", an agricultural labourer. Yet, behind his humble status in 1841 lies an incredibly colourful ancestry, him being descended from many important figures in Leicester's history, and further back, English history! His ancestry includes links to Robert Herrick, the three-time mayor of Leicester, to a key player in the Battle of Bosworth, also to King Richard III, and culminates with a descent from King Edward I of England.

Each post in this series will prove one generation backwards at a time, starting with Thomas Graves himself, and ending at King Edward I, and I hope you will follow the journey! The posts will mainly be kept to a maximum of two weeks between them at any given time. On the next post we will start by looking at Generation I, Thomas Graves himself, and begin to trace backwards!  


Tomb of King Edward I
Westminster Abbey
(photo taken by author)
Thurcaston (border highlighted in red)
From Google Maps

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The Royal Ancestry of Thomas Graves of Thurcaston - Generation I - Thomas Graves

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In the first post, I explained that in this series I shall be tracing the ancestry of Thomas Graves, born c.1811, and baptised in 1815, in Thurcaston, Leicestershire. However, before we begin to move backwards up his tree, we will look at Thomas Graves, his life, family, and tragic death. Birth Unfortunately, we do not know the exact date that Thomas Graves was born, but the 1841 Census gives his age as 30, the '51 Census as 40, and '61 Census as 50, and all give his place of birth as Thurcaston - with such consistency, we can say that his birth was fairly likely to have been between 1810-11. He was eventually baptised on the 24th December 1815, in Thurcaston, Leicestershire, along with his siblings Benjamin and Mary Graves. [1]  His parents were Storer and Mary Graves (as we will see in Generation II), and Storer was a cordwainer at the time, someone who makes shoes from leather. Thomas's other siblings siblings were:  Ann Graves, baptised 24th Aug 1800, in Hathern, a half
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The Royal Ancestry of Thomas Graves of Thurcaston - Generation II - Storer Graves

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In the  previous post  we proved that Thomas Graves was the son of Storer and Mary Graves. In this post, we will take a look at Storer Graves' life, and in turn, prove his parentage. Marriages We first meet Storer in the baptismal records of his children through Mary, in Thurcaston, Leicestershire. The children are listed in the last post, and were all baptised between 1806 and 1820, in Thurcaston, Leicestershire. Therefore, we can expect to find a parish marriage record for Storer before 1806, which will tell us his wife's maiden name. We duly find the marriage of Storer Graves to Mary Hall on the 27th November 1803 in Thurcaston. [1]  This marriage record tells us that at his marriage in 1803, Storer was a widower, so he had been married before. And Storer also signed his name, demonstrating that he was literate. Searching for any marriages of a Storer Graves prior to 1803, we find a Storer Graves being married to Jane Clarke, both of the "South End of Mountsorrel"
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