antecessor

noun

1. (archaic)A person or thing that precedes or goes before.

   “1671, Joseph Glanvill, A Præfatory Answer to Mr. Henry Stubbe, London: J. Collins, p. 57, […] the Waldenses[,] Antecessors of the Protestants”

   “Yet who says, I have faith in the existence of George II., as his present Majesty’s antecessor and grandfather?”

   “This, then, is their horrid counsel and device—that each one of their gods should kill his antecessor.”

   “The Book of Change in the general form it is known today [sic] is approximately three thousand years old. It is the third in a series of such texts, its antecessors supposed by some scholars to have been composed six and twelve hundred years earlier.”

2. (archaic)A person from whom one is descended.

   “[…] some, hath iudged wrongfully As in reproche, of our country Deniyng playne, moste noble Brute Our antecessor our stocke and our frute.”

   “[…] promises made to Abraham, and to other antecessors of the Iewes,”

   “At his mother’s knee he had heard of the exploits of her family, which boasted among its antecessors a surgeon on Nelson’s ship at Trafalgar.”