Re: TWEEDS of SUFFOLK, ENGLAND.
I jumped the gun there a bit seeing ' Bye' in Judiths Surname Index but sure she will have the answer at hand..she is clever that way. - Clif
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Re: TWEEDS of SUFFOLK, ENGLAND.
Regarding connections between Tweeds: at times they jumped across country long distances, e.g. between Scotland and SE England, so tracing a common ancestor may take one back many centuries. According to one genealogy, the Tweeds are related to the Bretons who came over with William the Conqueror, including Alan Rufus, first Lord of Richmond in Yorkshire, a very wealthy man indeed, who also had extensive estates in London, Essex, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, and counties around Lanarkshire. Those are exactly the areas where the surname Tweed is principally found in the 1891 English and Scottish censuses, which is a statistically unlikely accident, so a link is plausible. My maternal grandmother, Ellen May Tweed, is descended from those of the Cheveley Tweeds who migrated to Queensland, Australia. They owned a cattle station, and intermarried with other local property owners. Some of the English names in the recent part of "my" Tweed family tree include Blackwell, Lofts, Hockley, Ratcliff, Stickwood, Paves, Deare and Poulter, all of whom were also from near Duxford in Cambridgeshire. The Loft(e)s, for example, have been in Cambridgeshire at least since John Loftes was born in Great Abington since 1576; he is said to have been a son of a Mr Loftes who married Catherine Loftus, daughter of Adam Loftus (1533-1605), Lord Chancellor of Ireland. There may have been some kind of continuing association with the famous Hart family (they of the 1300s manor house), as they crop up twice in the Tweed family tree, once in connection with the Douglas, and again in the early modern era as step-relatives. The name Tweed may have a common origin with Welsh Twydr and Gothic Theodoric, which mean Theodore ("King of our People"). The word "Twyd" or "Theod" or "Tud" is of very ancient origin (coming from before a time when the Indo-European languages became distinct) and means "people" or "kin".
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Re: TWEEDS of SUFFOLK, ENGLAND.
My Tweeds of Suffolk (rich) and the Cheveley Tweeds (poor) do not seem to meet. My earliest Nicholas Abt 1490 died is Essex, there are Twidd of Essex in the Visitations whose ancestry can be traced back as Twidd of Dumfries' = about 1200 or so. Thus far no proven link has been found. To my knowledge there are 2 uncliamed bunches of Tweeds on the IGI. The first from around Quorden, Essex, I think these might prove to be Cheveley Tweeds. The second from around the Bradfied Combust, Bradfied St George area of Suffolk, I think just might be connected to my Suffolk rich bunch. Sadly poor or rich I have not found a penny to claim thus far !!. Always wondered where the 'reddish ' hair some rellies have came from ¬
- Clif
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Re: TWEEDS of SUFFOLK, ENGLAND.
Clif, have I already mentioned that both black and reddish (in my Aunt Audrey's case,auburn) hair occur among siblings in the Tweed line?
This was also true of the Breton royal family: most famously, Alan the Red was elder brother to his heir Alan the Black.
Some genealogies claim a shared ancestry between Tweeds and Tweedies, who in the 1891 census were pretty nearly mutually exclusively located. So one doesn't find many "Tweeds" in the Tweed valley, but the Tweedies owned half the castles in the Border country, including Drummelzier which they inherited by marriage from the Frasers, and Oliver castle.
That the Tweedies were important is shown by their marital connections with the Douglas and Stewart clans. The famous Black Agnes was married to a Tweedie. James V didn't have much sway over the Tweedies but he did attend a Tweedie wedding, uninvited.
According to surviving records, the Tweedies had a very combative history: they had feuds with several of the neighbouring lords, which were sometimes resolved by marriages, but more smouldered for centuries. For most of their history they seemed almost untouchable: the highest courts sometimes sentenced a Tweedie to exile for killing a fellow lord and they'd typically ignore the verdict with impunity.
Other clans in the Borders were as aggressive as the Tweedies, but the Tweedies were generally more powerful and consequently did as they wished, including taxing travellers, until centralised governments became very strong and imposed their own order on the Borders. Subsequently the Drummelzier Tweedies got into financial difficulties and lost their most important properties to creditors.
It's said that the Tweedies were not particularly concerned with religious matters, and this is borne out by their otherwise confusing succession of alliances. For instance they fought in the Parliamentary Army of Oliver Cromwell, but they also fought on the side of Bonnie Prince Charlie.
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Re: TWEEDS of SUFFOLK, ENGLAND.
That there are long lines of unconnected Tweeds is perhaps not surprising, if the origin of the name is many thousands of years old as I hypothesise. Even if all Tweeds in Britain are descended from one family of returned Bretons, the common ancestor may go back to 1200 or even 1100.
Contrary to general statements about surnames in Britain originating in the 1200s for taxation purposes, some family names long precede the "Norman Conquest". Chapman is an English example which has been recorded as early as AD 500.
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