Where did the DYER name come from?

© 2016 Christy K Robinson

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He signed his name "W Dyre"

Surnames (also called family names) were adopted in the 1200s and 1300s and people took their names from places, trades or professions, the head of the family or clan, and personal characteristics.

Some occupational names we recognize today are Tyler (made ceramic or clay tiles), Cartwright (built wagons), Carter (transported goods by wagon), Carpenter (built houses, churches, ships, and furniture), Mason (stone builder), Taylor (sewed clothing), Hooper (made barrel stays), Smith (blacksmith or metal worker), and many others. 

The Dyer name is not a rare one, and can't be traced back to one progenitor with many descendants. The name was one applied to a man (and his family) who dyed wool and cloth, which was a huge industry in Britain for hundreds of years.

15th century wool dyer and tapestry weaver.
(Yay for cats!)
Note the textiles hung to dry on racks behind the dyer.
See below for more images of dyers.

Robert le Deyare is registered in the 1275 Subsidy Rolls of Worcestershire; Alexander Dyghere is listed in the 1296 Subsidy Rolls of Sussex; and Henry le Dyer is noted in the 1327 Subsidy Rolls of Derbyshire. Bryan Dyer and Wenefrid Ketton were married on June 3rd 1583, at Enfield, London, and the marriage of Thomas Dyer and Margaret Gibson took place at St. Mary at Hill, London, on August 27th 1593. In March 1634, John Dyer, aged 28 yrs., departed from the Port of London, aboard the "Christian" bound for New England. He was one of the earliest of the namebearers in the New World. http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Dyer

Notice from that quotation above, that the Dyer surname was distributed all over England and they all had children with the Dyer surname. "Our" William Dyer wasn't the only Dyer to emigrate to New England. Nor was he the only William Dyer, for there were a William and Mary Dyer in Sheepscot, Maine, who were not the same as our William and Mary Barrett Dyer of Boston, Portsmouth, and Newport. There were unrelated Dyers in Virginia, where a William Dyer (from England) married a Mary Taylor -- they were not descendants of the famous Mary Barrett Dyer.

William Dyer (who spelled his name "Dyer" in England, but "Dyre" after his emigration to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635) was born on his parents' farm in Kirkby LaThorpe, Lincolnshire, in September 1609. But his father, also a William Dyer, didn't have roots there. Many genealogists and researchers believe (but haven't proved) the father came from Somerset, a county in the southwest of England, near Bristol. 

Concentration of Dyer name in the United Kingdom in the 2000s. Notice the high incidence of the Dyer surname in Somerset County, in southwest Britain. The Somerset Dyers, who are more likely to be related to us than the other "hot" areas around England, may be our cousins 12 times removed (which is to say that we share no DNA).

Another surname site, Forebears, shows the Dyer surname around the world. If you go to the section "Dyer Reference and Research," you'll see links to yDNA projects specifically for the Dyer surname. If you've had the yDNA test, you can join the project.

As you see, Dyer was and is a very common surname. When you complicate your search with the extremely common names William and Mary, you can see why you can't just assume that the Quaker "Mary Dyer" has to be your ancestor. You need to look at every generation for dates and locations, and decide if it's logical for Mary to be a mother, in America, before she emigrated in 1635, or if she gave birth to a child after she was hanged in 1660, or if she could simultaneously be in Maine, Rhode Island, Cape Cod, or Virginia popping out children. (Over the years I've kept this Dyer blog, administered a genealogy group, and done Dyer research, these are claims I see all the time!)

Florentine dyers in 1458 Italy.

from Elizabethancostume.net

Left image: medieval English textile dyer.
Right image: English dyers, published in a 1596 book in Leyden, Netherlands (the destination of the English Pilgrims between 1610 and 1620, when many of them emigrated to Plymouth, Mass., on the Mayflower.

Christy K Robinson is author of these books:

We Shall Be Changed (2010)

Mary Dyer Illuminated Vol. 1 (2013)  

Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This Vol. 2 (2014)

The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport Vol. 3 (2014)  

Effigy Hunter (2015)  

Anne Marbury Hutchinson: American Founding Mother (2018)

And of these sites:  

Discovering Love  (inspiration and service)

Rooting for Ancestors  (history and genealogy)

William and Mary Barrett Dyer (17th century culture and history of England and New England)

You can look at these antique maps for hours

© 2016 Christy K. Robinson 

Have you ever wondered about the image used in this blog's header? It's a portion of a large panel engraved in 1616 by Claes Jansz Visscher, a Dutch artist of the 17th century (when the Dyers lived). The amazing thing is that Visscher never visited England--so where did he get the descriptions of the River Thames and the hundreds of buildings in the engraving? How did he know where to plot St. Paul's, the Tower, the Globe Theater?

Mercurius Politicus, a blog about 17th century history, says that Visscher's panorama is derived from a 1593 map engraving by John Norden, a surveyor and engraver.    https://mercuriuspoliticus.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/london-panorama/ 

 

1593-John Norden's map of London. Click to enlarge.
(Wikipedia Commons)

 Visscher used Norden's map as a resource, but tilted the view nearer the horizon and just higher than a cathedral spire. We can do that with Google Maps street view or Google Earth. But for a 17th century Dutchman who hadn't even visited London, his panorama is astounding!

We can go even further back to an angel's-eye view of Tudor London, with the 1560 Ralph Agas map called Civitas Londinium. (Where did these people get the idea for such a high-altitude perspective?!)

1560-Civitas Londinium, by Ralph Agas. Click to enlarge.
(Wikipedia Commons)

A similar panorama of London was engraved in 1647 by Vaclav "Wenceslaus" Hollar, an etcher from Prague, Bohemia.

1647-Long View of London, by Wenceslaus Hollar.   (Wikipedia Commons)

As part of the 1616-2016 commemoration of Shakespeare's death, London's Guildhall Gallery is exhibiting the modern version of Visscher's panorama. From the same birds-eye perspective Visscher used, modern artist Robin Reynolds has created a 2016 panorama of London. Since most of us are not able to attend the exhibit, the websites will have to do. To see the Visscher and Reynolds works compared side by side and with zoomed-in sections, check out this news item at the link.
http://www.citylab.com/design/2016/02/london-panorama-1616-2016-visscher-exhibit/470085/ 

London panorama in 2016, by Robin Reynolds.

Before I wrote the books on the Dyers, I studied all the maps of the 16th and 17th centuries to determine where the Dyers lived, in relation to their church (St. Martin-in-the-Fields), William's master Walter Blackborne's house (where William was apprenticed, and where he and Mary lived when newlyweds), the New Exchange (where Blackborne and William Dyer were proprietors of a haberdashery), where Sir Henry Vane's parents lived, and many other locations. To see some close-ups and photos of the places, see my article in this blog, The Dyers of London and where they lived.

Christy K Robinson is the author of five books:

• We Shall Be Changed (2010)
• Mary Dyer Illuminated (2013)
• Mary Dyer: For Such a Time as This (2014)
• The Dyers of London, Boston, & Newport (2014)
• Effigy Hunter (2015)