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 The Shore Family
John Shore is our earliest Shore family relative known to have come to America, in 1832.
Our Family Gallery has a separate page for John Shore and his wife Mary Ann (Brandenburg) Shore, and their children.
This page is about John Shore's other relatives, some who came to America and others who remained in England.
John Shore had a brother and sister-in-law in England: Thomas and Mary (Haines) Shore. They had nine children.
We have letters in our family written from Thomas and Mary Shore, and we have found public records for them. All of these are shown near the bottom of this page.
An 1843 letter from Thomas and Mary Shore mentions that John and Thomas had a sister. No more information about her has been found yet.
Other possible Shore connections:
Here are public records for other families with the Shore name living near to where our known family lived. These records are from Devizes, West Lavington, and Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England. We do not know the relationship of any of these people to our family. The records are here to help in future research.
 Click below for census records.
1841 (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
1851 (1) (2)
1861 (1) (2) (3a) (3b) (4) (5)
1871 (1) (2) (3)
1881 (1) (2) (3)
1891 (1) (2)
1901 (1) (2) (3)
Possibly some of the people in these records are relatives of our family. Their descendants today could be living in those areas.
Marriages:
Early Wiltshire County records show these Shore marriages:
1757: William Shore to Sarah Forward. Licensed 11 Apr 1757.
1766: William Shore to Jane Bartlet. Married 23 Jan 1766.
1784: John Shore, bachelor to Anne Lander, spinster. Licensed 13 May 1784.
These records come from the Wiltshire Country Registers of Marriages, 1538-1812.
We do not know of any connection of our family to these marriages. They are furnished as an aid in future research.
Who Came to America?
Family records show that John Shore came to America in 1832.
Here is some background.
A letter written in 1843 to John Shore in Illinois, from his brother and sister-in-law in England, mentions:
"... the boy that was born the month after you left ... is 11 years old the 29 of May."
(An image of the letter is shown below.)
That letter, written in 1843, indicates that John Shore left England in April of 1832.
A U.S. Government publication, "Index to Records of Aliens' Declarations" shows that John Shore filed his Declaration of Intent for U.S. citizenship at the Court of Quarter Sessions in Philadelphia, on 6 October 1834. Typically in those times, the Declaration was filed about two years after the entry into the U.S.
He was a skilled cabinet-maker. Where he lived and how he earned his living in those early days after landing in Philadelphia, we do not know. We have not found any family records for those years.
Next in our family records: two years later on 4 November 1836, John Shore wrote a poem and signed it at Cats Creek, Ohio. In the four years from April 1832 when he arrived at Philadelphia, to November 1836 when he wrote the poem, he had come to a boat landing on the Ohio River. That was a fresh new area where adventurous people traveled into the expanding United States (Ohio was the 'northwest' of the country).
Just fifteen months after writing the poem, John Shore married Mary Ann Brandenburg in Erie County, Ohio on 14 February 1838 (Valentine's Day). They had four children (three survived to adulthood).
In November 1836 they were 150 miles apart. In February 1838 they were married. How they met, where and how they came to know each other, are not recorded in our family.
All of our family today is descended from their marriage.
For years the question remained unanswered: Who else came to America?
Some items found in our family raised the possibility that other Shore family members might have followed John Shore to America.
Here are the items that added to our family's "unsolved mystery":
Letters to John Shore from England Several letters are written to John Shore in Illinois, from his brother Thomas Shore and sister-in-law Mary Shore in England. One written in 1843 describes the family's life. Two letters, in 1849 and 1850, implore John's help so the family can purchase passage from England to America. They ask for funds to pay a ship's captain, and say that the money will be paid back in full after the family comes to America. Here are the letters:
 1843 Letter from Shore Family: Page 1 2 3 4 Text
 1849 Letter from Shore Family: Page 1 2 3 4 Text
 1850 Letter from Shore Family: Page 1 2 3 4 Text
Bank Money Draft, Dollars to Pounds Sterling Three documents from 1851 show that John Shore sent 23 Pounds Sterling (his cost: 117 Dollars) to his brother Thomas Shore in England. A letter (30 June 1851) from a banker to John describes how it can be done. Another document shows a table of currency exchange rates. The third document (25 July 1851) is a receipt from the banker to John Shore for the funds. Here are the three documents:
 1851 Money draft to Thomas Shore: Letter Table Receipt
Here are transcripts of the Letter and Receipt.
Envelopes with Postmarks Several empty envelopes are in our family, addressed to John Shore's family in Illinois. One is postmarked 1 October 1857 from Warminster, England. Others are postmarked from New York and Illinois. They all have the same handwriting. The envelopes are empty; whatever their contents were is not known.
The U.S. postmarks show a day and month, but do not show the year of mailing. Those series of U.S. postage stamps were issued from 1857 to 1861. We do not know where the letters were written.
Letters with U.S. postmarks do not prove that the person who wrote them was living in the U.S. Sometimes a letter written in England was handed to someone who would be sailing to America, and the letter was mailed after arrival.
... Example: Read the 1843 letter above.
Here are the envelopes. We do not know what they contained:
 Envelopes -- England and USA
Letter from Albertus Shore to Jesse Shore Albertus and Jesse are John Shore's grandsons. A letter from Albertus to Jesse (1918) reads, "I have heard father speak of his father having a bro start from England, to land somewhere down the coast there." It refers to a brother of John Shore, and mentions North Carolina. Here is the letter:
 1918 Letter from Albertus Shore: Page 1 2 3 Text
Finding Some Answers
A letter with a poem has been found in the family, written to John Shore's daughter Louisa Cedelia Shore from her cousin Alfred Thomas Shore. In addition to the poem, two business advertisements have been in the family in America for generations. They show Alfred Shore as a cabinetmaker and furniture restorer. One of them shows his business in Warminster, Wiltshire, England. The other shows his business in Burlington, Iowa. Here are the images:
 Alfred Shore (England): Front Back
 Alfred Shore (America): Image
After finding these items, it was possible to search immigration and shipping records for his name.
Now we have a ship's passenger list showing Alfred Shore sailing from Liverpool on the ship "Calhoun", arriving in New York on 18 May 1858. He is age 23; his occupation is "Carpenter". Here is a page from the ship's passenger manifest, showing his name:
 Ship "Calhoun": Alfred Shore (Line 141)
The ship's complete passenger list, with all the details of the ship's passage, is shown below in the information for Alfred Shore.
We also find him in Chicago, Illinois in the 1860 U.S. Federal Census. His occupation is Upholsterer:
 1860 Census: Alfred Shore (Line 5)
Other Family Members
The reference to another relative in Albertus Shore's 1918 letter to his brother Jesse Shore (shown above) suggests that other Shore family members came to America.
11 August 2011
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