The Massachusetts Branch
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by
Frederic C. Torrey
The genealogy and history of the Torrey families and their children in America possesses elements of exceptional interest through the fact that ninety five per cent of those bearing that name are the descendants of one man, Philip Torrey, who, with his wife, Alice Richards, lived in the parish of Combe St. Nicholas, Somersetshire, England. He died there in 1641 and his wife about 1634.
Almost all other American families of any size comprise a number of distinct branches which cannot be shown to be related to each other, so that each branch is interested only in its own particular origin and subsequent history.
It should be noted that the name Terry with its variants belongs, in every instance, to a separate and distinct family which in no way concerns us, and that our family name is found variously spelled as Torrey, Torry, Tory, Torey and Torrie.
The descendants of Philip Torrey and Alice Richards may be consistently known as the MAIN BRANCH, and those now living of Torrey name number well over six thousand. They will be interested to know that they can claim blood relationship, even though it may be remote, with almost all of those of their name whom they may meet, and it is the purpose of this work to show just what this relationship is and how each is descended from his first progenitor, as well as something of the conditions surrounding the earliest of his line.
Cradled in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, our MAIN BRANCH had spread well over the whole of that state before I750. A goodly number joined the various migrations to Connecticut, several branches removed to Vermont; while one family, locating in Deer Isle, Maine, with nine sons and each son the head of a large family, so speedily overflowed the little island that we soon find their posterity scattered over the adjoining main land.
When the exodus of pioneers from New England flooded into New York State, shortly before the Revolution, very many Torreys settled there, and the rush to the gold fields in the Nineteenth Century filled the west with settlers of our name. At present the MAIN BRANCH is to be found in greatest numbers in Massachusetts, New York, California, and Michigan where, in the town of Flint, a Torrey reunion has been held annually for the past twenty years. *
The greater part of the few hundred Torrey families in America which do not claim descent from Philip and Alice belong to a group which may be called the NORTH CAROLINA BRANCH, because they had their origin in a certain John Torrey whose home seems to have been Paisley, Argyleshirc, Scotland, and who is said to have come with three sons and three daughters to North Carolina about the vear 1770, taking up his residence near Fayetteville in that state. Most of the descendants of this branch are located in the Gulf States, especially Mississippi, where very few of the MAIN BRANCH are to be found.
A still smaller number of Torrey families have been traced back to a James Torrey with wives Elizabeth Peach and Catherine Niven (or Howell) who lived in Hopewell, Orange County, New York, and who seems to be connected with several otherwise detached Torreys of earlier date resident in New York City. We will call this the NEW YORK BRANCH.
Finally there was a James Torrey from Aberdeen, Scotland, who fought on the British side in the Revolutionary War in the 71st (Scottish) Regiment, and who settled with his wife Christine Kirk in Nova Scotia, in the latter part of the Eighteenth Century, a very few of whose descendants may be found scattered through the United States. This may be known as the NOVA SCOTIA BRANCH.
This concludes Frederic C. Torrey's verbatim written remarks of Frederic C. Torrey concerning the Massachusetts Branch of Torreys and its relationship to the other Torrey Branches.
Source: Frederic C. Torrey, The Torrey Families and their Children in America, Volumes I, II [1924, 1929]