The Church of St. Mary and St. Gabriel in Stoke Gabriel

By today's standards of travel, Stoke Gabriel would be considered a short commute from the nearest market town and port, Dartmouth, which is a mere 4 miles away by either road, or by water down the River Dart estuary. That distance in the 17th and 18th centuries must have been an impediment to anyone whose business was associated with the sea. We do not know how far back the Morrys were ship owners and involved in the fishing industry. We do know that they were involved in a banking partnership known as Morry, Prideau and LeMessurier, which was based out of the Channel Islands, specifically St. Peter's Port, Guernsey. It is possible that there was less need during those days to be close to the sea, or the family may have been involved in other merchant occupations. This is a matter for further research.

What we do know is that the family shows up in the Parish records in Stoke Gabriel at least as far back as 1624, with the birth of William Mory. It is a matter of speculation at this time, in need of verification, that William was the son of Henry Morey and Joan Hornebrook, of Totnes, just upstream from Stoke Gabriel on the Dart (see map above). Henry is thought to be the son of Alexander Morye and Joane Atwil, also of Totnes,  and Alexander is thought to be the son of Gregory Mawry and English Maunder of Paignton, the largest town in the District of South Hams at the time (just near the top right edge of the map). Gregory was born about 1537 and that is as far back as it is currently possible to speculate on the family history.

Most of the description of the lineage given above was developed with the assistance of Geoffrey Williams, an irrepressible New Zealander who leads, or rather bullies, a group of about 100 Morey researchers who co-operate on elucidating their common roots. By Geoffrey's system of naming clans, when you reach a "brickwall" and can't go any further back, the clan is named after the wife of the progenitor. So in our case we are now known as the "Clan English Maunder".

An aerial of view of modern day Stoke Gabriel

However, the fact of the matter is that we cannot yet be certain of any part of this ancestry going beyond William Mory in Stoke Gabriel. Note that in four generations the family name was spelled in four different ways. That was not unusual, since the large majority of people in those days were illiterate. Only the Parish priest would have known how to spell and he would have little to go on when it came to family names. In fact, in subsequent generations, the surnames of members of the same family often appeared by different spellings in the Parish records in Stoke Gabriel. William and his wife, Jennett Full, were married at Stoke Gabriel on September 23, 1650 and we know they had at least 10 children between 1651 and 1659, their Christenings all recorded at the Church of St. Mary and St. Gabriel. Their surnames were variously spelled Mory, Morey, Moore and Moary. Or at least that is how they have been transcribed, for the penmanship in those days was often not that much better than the spelling and the ravages of time on the record books has made reading these records in the original form very difficult and in the microfiched form, available at many Family History Centres and public libraries, almost impossible.

William was Matthew Morry I's G. Grandfather. In the four generations that separated them, or at least as long as the family remained in Stoke Gabriel, the family name began to be more consistently spelled as Mory. 

Click on the picture below to visit the Village of Stoke Gabriel's website

Family of William Mory and Jennet Full

Family of John Mory and Susanna ?

Family of John Mory II and Elizabeth Stone

Family of John Mory II and Second Wife Elizabeth Matthews