The Tryon Family In America

Author: Wesley Tryon

The Tryon Family
In
America


REVISED AND ENLARGED



To all the Tryons:

The following text from the publisher of Wes Tryon's "The Tryon Family in America" is missing a few useful details. The most powerful part of this unusual book is that you will find below three indicies that provide an opportunity to find by given, married names of female Tryons, or maiden names of women who married male Tryons.Find members of your family and the location in the text where the data gathered by Wes Tryon can be found. You will find these three indices immediately below the display here of the original publisher's Preface. When you find the record number that you want to use, go to the chapter that corresponds with the number to the left of the decimal in Wes Tryon's numbering system and then when open do a search for the whole code number to find it.


As the publisher of the second edition of Wes Tryon's book, "The Tryon Family in America," it has been the pleasure of not only myself but sister Carolyn Jean 10.185C, son Richard III 11.77b, and daughter-in-law Sharon Tryon, along with good help from my wife Anne, to assist Wes's effort by setting his manuscript in type from a computer-generated database which can be updated and periodically used to issue supplements and later editions with all entries filed in the proper sequence.

It has also been possible with the use of computer technology to construct important indices found at the end of the book which make the manuscript much more valuable not only to people whose surname is Tryon but to those who are related by marriage and wish to find reference to literally several thousand other names. While there may be other genealogical texts with similar advantages, I doubt that there are many.

Before discovering the extraordinary evidence that suggests that the Tryons in America are all related to one common progenitor, William of Bibury who landed in Wethersfield, Connecticut in 1663, I set out to try to answer the question posed by a distant English cousin, also named Richard Tryon, of Sheffield, England. He wanted to know what connection exists between English and American Tryons.

As you will find in Wes's delightful manuscript, which has taken well over 30 years to assemble, there is abundant information concerning the connection -- and indeed our roots are traced all the way back into France in the sixteenth century. In picking up the mantle of leadership for this research from Wes, I hope I will have opportunity to search further into the records of France and Belgium to trace the earlier Tryons, who apparently spelled the name Trioen. Meanwhile, I have enjoyed the opportunity of touring the English countryside on two occasions and have assembled for the reader a series of photographs which will give you further insight of your distant and remote heritage.

Although one other than William of the Bibury Tryons seems to have successfully acquired a significant reputation as the author of a treatise of vegetarianism, I found little evidence when visiting Bibury and when researching the records in the Gloucester courthouse to suggest that there are any others who have left anything for posterity. Such may not be the case, but it has yet to be discovered. The author, Thomas, born in 1634 in Bibury, went to work at age 6 washing and carding wool, as Bibury was one of the most important wool centers in England. In his teenage years, Thomas, a shepherd tending the flocks of sheep, decided to "get his letters" and after accomplishing what might be regarded today as a grade school education and having saved up the magnificent sum of three pounds, he walked to London where he apprenticed himself to a hatter. My guess is that in making and fitting hats for gentlemen of London, Thomas eventually attracted the attention of someone who recognized significant potential, for Thomas eventually became a wealthy merchant and turned to writing at age 48. A copy of his book and other writings are to be found in the Gloucester library along with an engraving of his likeness. He was obviously a man convinced that only "gruel and water" were essential to survival, satisfaction, and salvation. His desire to protect women from hard work and other perils assumed by the masculine world would make him a real chauvinist by today's standards. Among his followers, the most prominent in history was probably Benjamin Franklin. Among his descendant American cousins, there is to be found a contemporary, Thomas Tryon, who is also an author. It is interesting to note that the father of the contemporary Thomas Tryon is the only known Tryon to be living in Wethersfield, Connecticut, (as of 1980) the starting point of the American adventure for the family.

The printed book contains a number of English origin pictures and a description of them.

Although Wes Tryon notes that one of the two brothers in Bulwick failed to have issue beyond the third generation, the other has multiplied to this day. I have yet to find any evidence of descendants of the Bibury Tryons in England. That does not mean there aren't some, but it appears that most, if not all, are among the 3,000 or so living for the most part in the U.S. and Canada. While there were daughters of Thomas Tryon, the author who went to London, who may have issue living today, tracing them would be very difficult.

It can be said that the wealthy side of the family are represented by the issue of Peter of Bulwick. The reader will be interested in noting that this main branch of the family includes such notable descendants as Governor William Tryon who built the famous Tryon palace at New Bern, North Carolina, now restored and serving as a tourist attraction. He also served as a general at the time of the revolution and led the campaign in Danbury, Connecticut when one could surmise that his troups engaged descendants of William of Bibury, save for the ones loyal to the crown that fled to Canada!

Because the Tryons of Bulwick were close to the Royal Family in England and amassed some 7,000 acres of land between the villages of Bulwick and Harringworth, one can assume that there was little love lost between the Tory loyalists in England and the American revolutionaries from the Bibury strain for a century or more after the American Revolution. The rigors of life in the new world and the difficulties of transportation and communication across the ocean blurred all sense and awareness of heritage and association with the Bulwick side of the family. If our early American forefathers looked at all to the relations from Bulwick, it would have been with scorn at their aristocratic trappings and confessed allegiance to the Crown. Nonetheless, there are some interesting stories to be found in the book among the American Tryons who thought there might be economic opportunity to claim a distant relationship when the Bulwick estate was passing out of the Tryon family control for lack of issue.

A second page of photos represents the history of Bulwick and the Tryon family and shows some of the physical evidences of the aristocratic setting which is now the home of Timothy Conant, whose Grandmother Tryon was the last one to live in the manor house shown in a composite of two pictures. The bear on the top of the ornate gate at the far western end of the formal gardens is from the family coat of arms granted early in the seventeenth century and shown in each of the pictures of tablets on the walls of the churches in Bulwick and Harringworth. It may be fair to say that many of the best of the Tryons of Bulwick perished in the service of the English kings and queens. While there are no longer Tryons in Bulwick or Harringworth, there are a few scattered around England, including David in nearby Stamford, a bachelor minister; a brother John; sister Ann; also without issue; and Dick, whose photo standing alone alongside the church in Bibury. He is the only known English cousin with issue (sons Robin, Jeffrey, and Nicholas). It is fitting that this picture puts together a Bulwick Tryon alongside the church of the Bibury Tryons.

Speaking of the church, I have personally held, read, and copied entries in the church records found in the Gloucester courthouse which attest to the baptisms of such members of the family as Rebecca, a sister or cousin of William of Wethersfield. Dick, a genuine hero of the British army, served as a tank commander in the African campaigns from late 1942 until he lost his tenth tank and left the battlefield severely wounded. His interest and that of his wife, Janet, have encouraged me to pursue the effort that created the publication of Wes' second edition.

If it has also created the first "rapprochement" between English and American Tryons, I should not be too surprised! I can only say that if such is so, it is a great shame, for I am sure many of us in the new world have therefore missed the opportunity to enjoy friendly and loving relationships with distant English cousins. But then, we have been so busy building this country that we haven't done very well at maintaining significant relationships with most of our American cousins either! I know of one "clan'' that meets annually in Ohio, and I hope someday to visit that group and to present a distant English cousin at the same time.

With the assistance of new generations of Tryons, I hope that the database established will be maintained and expanded, not only for newborns, but for missing branches lost by our careless unconcern for maintaining good records. Anyone wishing to forward new material for inclusion in the database, upon proper authentication, may send same to me in care of TelePrint Systems, Inc., 474 E.Crystal Downs Dr., Frankfort, MI 49635; or e-mail tryon@teleprint.com

Finally, I hope you will enjoy the book as much as I have appreciated taking a hand in publishing it. A letter of thanks to author Wes Tryon, Wheaton, Maryland, is certainly in order.

Richard R. Tryon
Publisher
March 1984