Henry Truro Bray wrote in his book, The Evolution of a Life, that his great grandfather was a Bengali prince who was kidnapped by the British while bathing. Henry himself was quite a character, a renegade Methodist minister who gave up his religious career to write books on physics and spiritualism around the turn of the century. In one of his books he describes how a former Egyptian, now running for office on Jupiter, had visited him to ask for a letter of recommendation.
However romanticized HTB’s family stories have checked out at every turn. And the baptismal record in the Church of England at Truro for a “Peter Truro” in 1777 confirms that Peter is an adult (he marries two years later) and that he is a foreigner (literally “a black”). Peter’s family of mariners lived in Flushing and ran The Seven Stars, an inn which is still standing today (albeit, it has new walls after burning down at the turn of the 20th century).
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Scrapbook
* Will of Catherine Richards Truro (Original in PDF here)
* Transcript of Will of William
Truro (Original in PDF here)
* Notes on Mary Lavinia Howe Truro Bray
—- "Forty Miles to Falmouth," Mary Lavinia Bray, Munsley’s, 1907