Origins
Where did we come from? There have been Storers around for nearly 700 years but, as shown earlier, most lived in the Midlands or Southern England.
It may have been a migrant from the south. The population was a little more mobile than is sometimes supposed but the odds are surely against a move from relatively peaceful Midlands to dangerous and ravaged Northumberland.
There is another possibility. Maybe we are from Scottish stock. In Scotland the tenant of a sheep farm was called a ‘ Storemaster’ and the Storour had charge of flocks and herds.
It is a fact that the kingdom of Northumberland at one time included large parts of southern Scotland. It is also true that there were periods of peace when the inhabitants moved freely over the Borders which were not settled until 1607. During the years of Border raiding in the 1500s people would be Scottish or English, depending on the nationality of the raiders whose knife was at their throat.
It is difficult to know at this distance but there is anecdotal evidence which suggests Storour.
Storers in Rothbury
At the time of posting this web site there is relatively little I can tell about our Rothbury relatives. I called to see them last year and again this year and was made very welcome. Time did not allow us to discuss our ancestry in depth but we have agreed to research our common roots and I hope to have more to tell soon. It is a certainty they are descended from the Storers of 1538.
They have a family legend regarding those wild, early times. If raiders were detected it was the sworn duty of every able bodied man in the district to arm himself and give pursuit; this was known as “hot trod”. On one occasion all the Storer men were called out, leaving behind one 15 year old boy. The men were all killed which suggests we are all descended from the boy left at home. An enduring tradition is that the first born son is always named Robert or William.
What is certain is that their family lived on and worked the farm at Mount Healey until the end of 03. It must have been a great wrench but Robert felt the future lies outside farming and has diversified into other fields.
If you visit Rothbury Parish Church you can see plaques commemorating Robert Storer who died in 1834 while studying at Kronstadt University, and Thomas Storer, a missionary who was murdered in Calcutta in 1838. There are some gravestones too, rather weathered in several cases.
