Faith, Service, and Respectability
A Historical Biography of the Shorto Family, 1680–1997
A three-century family study of religion, education, work, civic identity and social mobility.
The book follows a provincial English family across generations of teachers, craftsmen, professionals and servants of church and community, asking how faith, respectability and service shaped both opportunity and identity.
Why I wrote this book
The Shorto family had already been the subject of detailed genealogical reconstruction, but I wanted to move beyond descent and chronology. Across several centuries, recurring patterns of education, Anglican faith, professional aspiration, civic duty and respectability gave the family history a coherence that a conventional family tree could not explain on its own.
The purpose of the book was therefore to ask how values were transmitted across generations and how a provincial family negotiated changing opportunities without losing the cultural language through which it understood itself.
Where the research began
The documentary foundation was created in The Shorto Family of Exeter. Returning to the same archive years later allowed me to reorganise that material around historical themes rather than simply family branches. George Roberts Shorto, later the subject of Duty and Dignity, is one important figure within that wider story.
Sources and method
The study draws on census returns, civil and parish records, newspapers, professional and civic material, directories and family evidence. The long chronological span makes context particularly important: the same words—service, duty, respectability, faith—did not mean exactly the same thing in every generation.
How it fits into my wider work
This book sits between genealogy and social history. It represents my attempt to turn a large family archive into an argument about institutions, values and social mobility, while retaining the detailed reconstruction that made the later interpretation possible.
Publication details
- Author: Antony David Davies
- Published: June 2025
- Formats: Kindle and paperback