The patriarch of the family was probably Sampson Shores, born in Buckland Brewer, Devon, England in 1614. Sampson married twice, the first time to Abigail Benson in 1640 in Buckland Brewer where his wife was born. They had a daughter Eunice, but Abigail must have died at or shortly after the birth because about a year later Sampson Shore married Abigail Purchase in Massachusetts. The Purchases came from Dorchester, Dorset where Abigail was born on July 4 1624. The likely scenario is therefore that Sampson emigrated to America immediately after the death of his wife and that Eunice went to be raised by a family member in Devon because she subsequently married Charles Glidden in Bideford in 1658. Meanwhile Sampson working as a tailor, appears in Boston, Mass in 1641 and there he joined the church in January 1642. later becoming a Deacon. With his second wife he raised a new family between 1643 and 1660. In this family Jonathan was the oldest, born in 1643. There were four daughters: Abigail, Susanna, Ann, and Elizabeth, and probably four other sons. Jonathan eventually went to live in Lynn. The IGI gives a further two earlier generations of SHORES, George born 1571 and his father John born 1545, both in Warleggon in Cornwall. There is some doubt about this attribution because a search in Warleggon by a local Rotarian has failed to find any Shores there. However, we can be reasonably sure that Hiram Shorey's ancestors came from the West Country.