Thomas Aston
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Thomas Aston, born in 1480 in Checkley, Staffordshire, England was a minor noble in that area due to the marriage of his great-grandfather Roger Aston (1370-1447) to Joyce Feville (1374-1439), a descendant of Welsh royalty Maredudd ab Owain, Saxon royalty, Ethelred II, the Unready, Scottish royalty King David I of Scotland and Henry I of England, probably the first Norman ruler to be fluent in the English language.
Unfortunately for the Aston family, their ties to the feuding Plantagenet dynasty did little to endear them to the Tudor dynasty when Henry VII claimed the throne from Richard III and enforced that claim by defeating him at the Battle of Bosworth Field, 22 August 1485, where Richard was killed ending both the Plantagenet line of kings and the War of the Roses.
Aston's father John died in 1484 when he was still a boy, the 8th of 13 children, including three born after his mother remarried. His mother was able to ensure the children were well educated and distributed a generous share of the family fortune to each.
Thomas continued this tradition as he married in 1508, and spent the rest of his life ensuring that his children married well and that his fortune was dispersed in educating them lest it fall into the hands of the Tudors, especially Henry VIII, who had the habit of seizing the properties of nobility which had fallen into disfavor.
Through Aston's elder brother John (1471-1523), the family title of nobility was finally restored when the Tudor line died out in 1603. Initially, James I, King of England granted the title of Order of the Bath to Walter Aston, great great grandson of Thomas's brother John Aston in 1611. He was elevated to Lord Aston of Forfar in 1627. The peerage continued until 1845, when the last Lord Aston (also named Walter) died without issue.
However, by this time, descendants of the Astons were already well-established in the United States.
Thomas Aston's daughter Ellen was married to Robert Lowthrop in 1535 and wisely continued the tradition of investing the family wealth in education rather than more visible forms of wealth to ensure that their grandson Rev. John Lathrop was ordained as a minister in the Church of England. Lathrop's direct descendants number more than 80,000 Americans, including four U.S. Presidents, three first ladies, an assortment of governors, religious leaders, inventors, military leaders and industrialists. In addition to these respected descendants, they also include the turncoat Benedict Arnold.
