Evolution of a Life
by Rev. Thomas Henry Truro Bray, 1890, Chicago
Chapter 1 – Early Life and Parentage
(Also excerpts from The Soul of Man)
My knowledge of my predecessors extends no further back than three generations. On my father’s side my great-grandfather’s name was Richard Bray, and his wife’s name was Catherine. I knew her as a very old lady living with a relative called Dexter, in Hightown, Cornwall, England. There she died in the year 1864, being about a hundred years of age. From this marriage were begotten Thomas, William, John, and Richard. Thomas Bray, my grand-father was born about 1788, and died in Desertville, Kenwyn Parish, Cornwall, England, in 1829. His first wife’s name was Priscilla, who was the mother of my father dying when he was yet an infant.
My father, Richard Bray, was born February 15th, 1812, at Desertville, Kenwyn Parish, Cornwall, England, and was raised chiefly by his grandmother. When twenty-one years of age, he married at Andropolis, Cornwall, England, Miss Lavinia Howe, eldest daughter of Mr. William Truro of Flushing, Cornwall, England.
My mother’s grandfather was a prince of Bengal, India. He is said to have been captured while bathing, and carried to England where he remained, taking up his residence at Andropolis. In due time this Bengalese, my great-grandfather, married a girl by the name of Catherine Richards. My grandfather, William Truro, was born of this marriage. Of any other children, I know nothing.
The first wife of William Truro, my grandfather, was known as a girl by the name of Eliza Ann Eddy, daughter of a Rev. Eddy of the Church of England, who was for many years well known as the recotr of a church in Fairville, Cornwall, England. The only child of this marriage was my mother, Lavinia Howe, who was born February 24th, 1812. The mother died while her only child was yet an infant.
My mother’s father, William Truro, kept a large hotel, called the Seven Stars, at Flushing, Cornwall, England, where my mother was raised in comparative luxury and ease.
Our family consisted of eleven children, of whom I was born near Andropolis, Cornwall, England, Wednesday, December 16, 1846. At the time of my birth, there was almost a famine in England, and my dear parents, especially my father, felt severely the pressure of the prevailing distress. Perhaps it was owing to this lack of abundance in our household that the wise-woman who attended my mother, could truthfully say to me, when about eight years old, “Ah, my little darling, when you were born I could put you into a small pitcher.”
Evolution of a Life
H.T. Bray
Page 166-167
I had a sister in the State of Adams, and it was ten years since I had seen her. Having no special duties to perform, I determined to set out for that state. On the 25th of the month, having been four days on my journey, I arrived at the residence of my sister Kate, where I received a royal welcome from herself and her husband. While visiting my sister I baptized very many children and adults, my sister Kate and her children being among the number. I also preached for the Methodist Episcopal minister and delivered a lecture in his church, on the 6th day of March, for which I received the sum of twenty-two dollars and fifty cents. During my stay with my sister, I visited the silver mines near the village. It was a wonderful sight to see the veins of ore, and no less to see the mechanical skill used in bringing the ore from the mines down to the stock-piles. The large buckets moved along over head, laden with their precious burdens, as if living things.
Since I had seen my dear sister, she had greatly changed. When I last had seen Kate, she was not a mother; now she was the mother of four children, and in most prosperous circumstances. This sister had always been very dear to me and I was rejoiced at her prosperity.
Page 4
June 30th, 1864 with the consent of my dear father, whose health was gradually getting worse, I determined to go to America and join my sister Kate, at Hilltown, Michigan, in the hope of doing more for him whom I loved with my whole soul. So great was my love for my father that, when absent from him in person, his ghost, or shadow, seemed to follow me.
Page 179
Saturday, November 23rd (1878), we left Brushville in company with my brother and mother, bound for the state of Adams. We visited first in the state the town of Mountainville, for the purpose of seeing my sister Elizabeth Anna, whom I had not seen for fourteen years. As we approached her residence, she saw me at least a block away, came to meet me and with tears streaming down her cheeks, exclaimed: “Oh, father! Father!” intending by this to show her recognition of her father in me. My dear sister had greatly changed. She had lost by death her husband in England, and was now a widow having the care of five children. The marks of deep anxiety were deeply impressed on her countenance, and she was pale and emaciated. She was at all times a most dutiful daughter and an affectionate sister.
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The Soul of Man
HT Bray
Page 405
It is not impossible that we may find in this threefold body of man an explanation of apparitions in some cases even of animals. My own mother, at the time living on the Island of Jersey, in a large old mansion surrounded with a high court wall, and sitting in the recess of a large window, engaged on some embroidery work for the expected child, plainly saw, as she thought, her father pass the window at midday. She rushed outside to welcome him and was amazed to find no one there. The gates of the courtyard were still fastened, and no person could be found within the enclosure. She was greatly affected; but in a few days she thought the vision was explained; she then received a letter saying that her father had died in Flushing, south-western England, at that time speaking of her with his latest breath. What did my mother see? Was it merely a phantasm of her brain? Perhaps so; but I think it may have been the second or ethereal body of which I have spoken, as being one of the three bodies of man. This would seem to be what many people call the astral body, and is much more bound to earth, because more closely allied to it than is the soul body. I conceive it quite possible that under peculiar conditions at death, such as intense desire to speak certain matters or to a person, this ethereal body, slightly stamped with stable identity or abiding personality, might retain its form for some time, perhaps in certain cases until the desire is accomplished.