Tryon Family in England

Profile managers: Michael Tryon [send private message] and Michael Maranda [send private message]

This page is intended to assist in the coordination of research on the ancestry and descendants of members of the Tryon family in England, including variations on that name. You may also wish to see The Tryon Family in America.

Early records of the family are difficult to trace because written records only started becoming common in the later half of the 16th century. During this time, and through the 19th century, few people were literate and spelling was entirely phonetic and dependent on those few who were trained to make records. What has become the Tryon name was spelled Trioen, Tryoen, Trion, Trian, Tryan, Triant, Tryham, and on and on. People wrote down what they thought they heard and accents and dialects varied across the country. By carefully following the families we can still establish links and find that what may have started out as Trian ended up as Tryon. The name Tryon, as spelled, is mostly a result of the family commonly known as the Bulwick Tryons using this spelling early on and, as a known name from a well known family, it became established as the standard spelling. Other families, both indigenous and immigrants, with similar sounding names such as Trine came to be known as Tryons over time.

Surnames were not generally used until the 13th century and not common until the 15th. The earliest record of a Tryon or its variants in England was in a 13th century document about an 11th century knight of Normandy. The following excerpt from the publication "County records of the surnames of Francus, Franceis, French, in England : A.D. 1100-1350, by French, A. D. Weld (Aaron Davis Weld), 1835-1896" [1] summarizes and quotes work from "Archaeologia Cantiana", a historical journal of the Kent Archaelogy Society, regarding a place known as Trehanston or Tryenestone in Romney Marsh in Kent.

"A.D. 1252. — Writ to inquire whether the land of Trehanston [Trienstone Manor, Burmarsh, Kent], which the brethren of the king's Hospital of Ospring [Maison Dieu, Faversham, Kent] have of the king's bailiwick, be of the king's domain or his escheats, and, if his escheat, why? and how much it is worth, and whether the king can grant it to whom he will. Tested at Canterbury, March 10, 36 Henry III."

"The inquisition was taken by Nicholas Jordan, Thomas Jordan, Simon Warman, James le Franceis and others, who say upon their oath that the said land of Tryenestone, immediately after the conquest of England [1066], was given to a certain knight named Tryan, who held it so long as he lived, and after his decease Hugh Tryan, his son and heir, retained it, and, after the said Hugh, Robert Tryan, son and heir of the said Hugh, retained it. So that the said Trian, Hugh, and Robert held the said land without challenge from the lord William the King, the Bastard, to the time of King John [1199-1216], who took the said land, together with other lands of the Normans [1203], into his own hands, as his escheats, and expelled the said Robert, the last holder, from the kingdom of England, and held it in his own hand for two years, and afterward gave it to Alberic de Marinis, to hold at his pleasure, who held it to the time of our lord, the King Henry that now is."

Note that this same dialog is found in many sources with slight changes in spelling so the knight Tryan is also seen as Trian and the place is also known as Trienstone. The knight named Tryan would have been part of the Norman conquest of England in the 11th century. He was probably Norman but could have been of Breton, Flemish, or French origin (or combination thereof) as all took part in the invasion.

The next record of the Tryon name in England we've found was Peter Tryon who was Prior of the Holy Sepulchre Church, Thetford, from 1454 to 1471 ^{[1] [2]}. The Holy Sepulchre Church, Thetford, was a medieval monastic house from about 1200 to 1540. No additional information on this Peter Tryon has been found.

The best known Tryons of England, the Bulwick Tryons whose patriarch was Pieter Trioen (abt.1540-1611), came from Flanders in what today is Belgium, and from this is the common assumption that all Tryons came from the area of the Netherlands. This family generally, at least in their early years, were members of the Dutch church in England. They were often wealthy merchants and landowners. Samuel Tryon (abt.1582-1627) was the first of the Tryon Baronetcy, established in 1620 [2], and much later George Clement Tryon (1871-1940) became the first Baron Tryon [3]. In America, the English Governor of North Carolina, New York, and general in the Revolutionary War, William Tryon (1729-1788), was a member of this family.

The only other documented families of Tryons in England lived in the Gloucestershire and Hertfordshire parishes during the 16th century and were already there when the Flemish Tryons arrived in Northhamptonshire. Their name was generally spelled Tryan or Trian in early records and their patriarchs were the brothers John Tryon (abt.1530-abt.1574) and Robart Tryon (abt.1535-1573) in Gloucestershire and Richard Tryon (abt.1535-bef.1582) and John Tryon the elder (abt.1550-aft.1611) in St Albans Parish, Hertfordshire. We have linked the two Gloucestershire brothers through the semi-fictitious John Tryon, their father. The earliest records of them are in Gloucester and nearby Cheltenham. The two in Hertfordshire are cousins or uncle/nephew to each other. The relationship between the Gloucestershire and Hertfordshire families is unclear but they share many of the same given names and very likely share a patriarch within a generation or two. All these families appear in every way to be established English, not recent immigrants as with those of Northhamptonshire above. They share very English names and are associated with the Church of England. They are mainly working-class people including joiner, tilers, plasterers, etc. One did become a somewhat famous author, Thomas Tryon (1634-1703), and his nephews, Rowland Tryon (1667-1720) and William Tryon (1672-bef.1742) were wealthy merchants in London.

All documented Tryons in England in the 16th and 17th centuries appear to belong to either the Gloucestershire/Hertfordshire Tryons or the Bulwick Tryons, however we still have a number of late 16th and 17th century Tryons who we have not connected. Significantly, we do not know of which family the Tryon family of America are descendants, however common family names, the English protestant church links, and their working-class occupations, would suggest that William of Wethersfield and his descendants are of the Gloucestershire/Hertfordshire Tryons. We also have Y-DNA evidence from thirteen Tryon-surnamed men in American and one direct male descendant of Pieter Trioen in England that indicates that these two groups do not share a male ancestor for at least the last 25 generations (about 750 years). Based on FTDNA's haplogroup origins, the patrilineal ancestors of the Tryons of America arrived in England from northern Europe over 2,000 years ago.

A Y-DNA study of living Tryons can be found here Tryon DNA Projects and Resources

1. ↑ A History of the County of Suffolk: Volume 2, ed. William Page (London, 1907), pp. 109-111.
2. ↑ The Victoria History of the County of Norfolk, Volume 2, edited by Herbert Arthur Doubleday, William Page, pp. 393

Some secondary resources can be found on Space:Tryon_Research_Secondary_Sources_Compendium