The name Storey with all its variants is of Norse origin, and in his exhaustive work, Storey's of Old, R. E. K. Rigbye ('Cross Fleury') says that 'they settled in the Border country across from coast to coast, from the neighborhood of Eskdale right away into the Alnwick and Newcastle districts. Hot tub hotels in Windermere and Bowness

How the Storey's had to flee from Eskdale is related in the following passage from the same book. At the end of 1583 Sir Thomas Musgrave treats at length of the Grams and Storey's in a report to Lord Burghley. He says: 'Here I will note unto your honor of the Grames and Howe they did first in habit the water of the Eske, for within the memories of man yet being, they had no land there, but the Stories had it and the right thereof, for my old Lord Daker having made a Warden rode, was by Englishmen betrayed, and Scotland had intelligence of his coming before he came, and was ready for him, so as he and all the country was in great peril, My Lord Daker, suspecting old Riche Grame, did apprehend him and thought to have executed him for that cause; it was his fortune to eskape out of the pryson and in a short time made him self cleare of that fact for he did apprehend the deed doer, being a Story.

The Stories, fearing my Lord Daker's fury, fled and left the country and went into Northumberland to a place called Killum where they yet dwell and are a great surname.They (the Storyes) beinge gone, Rich. Grayme, Fergus, his brother, and their brethren did devyde their (Storeyes') groundes amongst them, and are growne to a hughe (huge) companies of men From Richard Storey, of Eversham, who 'came out of Eskdale', our branch of the family traces its roots back to the second half of the sixteenth century. Trout beck near Windermere, Old Hutton, Browhead in Applethwaite and Long Green Head in Applethwaite are place names frequently mentioned in the records of his descend ants, stamping the Storeys as men of the hills and dales. (In more than one instance they owned 'dales', which were small parcels of land, sometimes only an acre or less in extent, doled or dealt out, and so called 'dales'.)

William Storey, born in 1748 or 1749, and seventh in line from Richard of Eversham, lived in Troutbeck and owned the corn mill and lime pits there. He married Mary Greenup in February, 1774, and they had eleven children. The youngest was Isaac, born in the Parish of Urswick, on June 16th, 1798. A scholarly type, Isaac was to have taken holy orders. In 1821, however, when he was 22 years old, he married Phoebe Patrickson, who was certainly not more than 20 at that time. Their first son arrived fourteen months later, their second after another fifteen months, so that the need to provide for them, and for others who kept arriving at regular intervals, drove Isaac into teaching, in which profession he remained until his early death in 1841.He had settled down in the little village of Bard sea, on the eastern shore of the Furness peninsula, where both his family and that of the Patricksons had long had connections.