Advice Needed for Starting

[styner83]

Anyone have any advice for an American who'd like to research his family back into England?

Any help is appreciated.

[Peter Goodey]

In the nineteenth century there was a significant concentration of TYNERs in the Chorley district of Lancashire. This district included the parishes of Adlington, Anderton, Anglezarke, Bretherton, Brindle, Charnock Richard, Chorley, Clayton le Woods, Coppull, Croston, Cuerdon, Duxbury, Eccleston, Euxton, Heapey, Heath Charnock, Heskin, Hoghton, Leyland, Mawdesley, Rivington, Ulnes Walton, Welsh Whittle, Wheelton, Whittle le Woods, Withnell.
That list may not be complete and may not reflect the position in the late seventeenth century. It might be a reasonable place to start looking.

These "Notes for Americans on tracing their British ancestry" may be worth reading; there are several pointers to other reading matter: -
http://www.sog.org.uk/leaflets/americans.html

By the way, many of us have a struggle getting back as far as 1679. I mention that just so you won't think your task is going to be easy!

It will also be worthwhile reading some English history of the period.

[robdurk]

Hi Shane

The Office of National Statistics surname dataset is searchable online at http://www.taliesin-arlein.net/names and produces the following:

Surname Count Ranking
TYNER 105 =32154

Which suggests there are somewhere in the region of 100 living TYNERs in England and Wales at the moment.

With regard to your next step, you really need to find out which part of the country your Nicholas is from. There are no central records pre-1837; the majority of information before that is gleaned from deeds, parish registers and wills. Knowing where to search will save you a lot of fruitless time spent searching.

If you don't know this then it might be worth spending a little time establishing the main centres of TYNER population in the 17th century.. the IGI (treat with caution) may help with this:
http://www.familysearch.org

Also, Access to Archives may turn up a few documents to help get a sense of geography:
http://www.a2a.org.uk

Another useful resource would be the new 2nd edition National Burial Index. Although not comprehensive, it may help in indicating parishes which TYNERs have inhabited for periods exceeding a generation. It's available from the Federation of Family History Societies:
http://www.ffhs.org.uk/General/Projects/NBI.htm

Once you've got a reasonable mapping of concentrations it's a matter of hard slog in consulting parish registers one after another and piecing the results together.

Hope that helps

Rob

[Clive Blackaby]

Hi Shane

The Office of National Statistics surname dataset is searchable online at http://www.taliesin-arlein.net/names and produces the following:

Surname Count Ranking
TYNER 105 =32154

Which suggests there are somewhere in the region of 100 living TYNERs in England and Wales at the moment.
According to http://www.192.com/search.cfm there are 44 Tyners on the 2003 electoral register

I have their details in a file which I will email to you if I can find your address on the user profiles.

p.s. Shane - if you send me an email via the address on my profile on this site, I will send the file to you

[Clive Blackaby]

Hello again Shane,

I've just had a look on the Genes Reunited site, and there are 59 Tyner references on there, some of them in the UK, so you may well find someone there to team up with

http://www.genesreunited.co.uk

Clive

[Clive Blackaby]

Hi Shane,
I don't have the 2nd edition, but the first edition of NBI gives just 9 entries, including spelling variants, which are also fairly widely distributed. (can't get them into my reply - I'll mail them to you)
This led me to wonder about the origin of the name. I can only find one reference. In his "English Surnames, their Sources and Significance" (1873, rev 1969) Charles Wareing Bardsley says it all:

"Surnames of Occupation (Country)"

" ... ... there is one more term belonging to this group [Hedgers and Pallisers] which I am afraid has disappeared from our family nomenclature - that of 'Tiner', he who tined or mended hedges. A John de Tynere occurs in the Parliamentary Writs"

" ... 'Hedging and Tining' was a phrase in vogue not more than 200 years ago [from 1873, i.e. in the late 17th century] ... ... the tines of a stags horns or the tines of a fork with the same root implying a twig. In our old English forest law a 'tineman' was an officer very similar to the 'hayward'*, the only apparent difference being that he served by night"

[*Hay = hedge: ward = guard. Responsible for keeping the cattle from straying out of the village enclosure]

Of course in 1873 Bardsley did not have the advantages of the internet nor of CD Books. Little could he have known that there were still one or two of you still lurking in the hedgerows waiting to leap out like rabbits!

[Clive Blackaby]

Another popular one was that the name Tyner came from the naming of people who lived along the Tyne river.
I'd buy that one if there were a predominance of the name in the North East of England. The fact that it is thinly spread over the country makes it more typical of an occupational name than a geographical one.

That's not to say that C.W.B. is infallible - after all he thought the Tyners were extinct. :)

[styner83]

I'd buy that one if there were a predominance of the name in the North East of England. The fact that it is thinly spread over the country makes it more typical of an occupational name than a geographical one.

Is it possible that there was a predominance of the name in the North East 400-500 years ago and by the 19th century it had spread? Or would that be something that would be more visible in any kind of records in the North East?

[Peter Goodey]

"The fact that it is thinly spread over the country"

As I mentioned above, it is not evenly spread throughout the country. 1881 census figures show a rate of 25 occurrences per 100,000 of the population in the Chorley Poor Law Union. The runner up is Leominster with only 7 per 100,000. A difference such as that is usually significant.

[Clive Blackaby]

Agreed 28 of about *110 Tyners in 1881 were in Lancashire, and 11 of them were in Chorley district, but this is two households of 8 and 3 persons. But on that basis I'd agree that Lancashire is as good a place to start as any. Certainly the North East of England is totally bereft of them.

Equally, if not more significant of course is that 11 / 110 were born in Ireland.

The rest are similarly spread with no more than about 3 families in any county, more or less throughout the UK. To be honest they are too thinly spread for any statistics to have much meaning, except to say that if were a geographically based name, there has been an unusually wide 'diaspora'

*depends how flexible you want to be on the spelling