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GENEALOGICAL MEMORANDA RELATING TO THE FAMILY OF MERRIAM GENEALOGICAL MEMORANDA RELATING TO THE FAMILY OF ·ERRI BY CHARLES PIERCE MERRIAM AND C. E. GILDERSOME-DICKINSON LON 1)01\1 PRIVATELY PRINTED AT THE CHISWICK PRESS 1900 Number of copies printed : Large Paper . 12 Small Paper . I oo CONTENTS. PAGE. Preface . V Merriam records prior to A.D. I 400 • • • • I Wills, etc., in the Probate Registry at Canterbury . 2 Wills formerly at Rochester. 40 Wills, etc., in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury . 56 Chancery Proceedings . 64 Pa~ish Registers and Marriage Licences . 74 Kentish Feet of Fines, Lay Subsidies, Poll-Books, and Mis- cellanea . 83 Index of Names . 89 Index of Places . 97 PEDIGREES. Tables A and B. Merriam of Goudhurst and Horsmonden, co. / Kent. Table C. Merriam of Canterbury. Tables D and E. Meryham of Boughton Monchelsea, co. Kent. Table F. Merryham of Maidstone. Table G. Merriam of Massachusetts from Tonbridge, Hadlow, Tudeley, etc., co. Kent. Table H. Goldston of Tonbridge. FACSIMILES. Sussex Lay Subsidy Roll, A.D. 1295 . • Facing page I Kentish Lay Subsidy Roll, A.D. 1327. • • ,, 2 Will of Katherine Meryam, I 563* . • • ,, 40 Will of William Mirriam, 1635* . • • ,, 47 Will of Richard Meriam, 1640*. • • ,, 53 * Inserted only in numbers I to 9 of the Large Paper ,copies. PREFACE. THE name of Merriam is now a distinct! y American name. Although in 1638, when Robert, George and Joseph Merriam, the sons of William Merriam, of Hadlow, in Kent, emigrated, and settled at Concord in Massachusetts, there were living at several places in Kent, as is shown by these evidences, a number of people bearing the name, it has now, as far as is known, quite died out in that county, and as regards the English branch, altogether in England. The writer of this preface, who was born in America, being great­ great-grandson of Nathan Merriam (25 v.) mentioned in Mr. W. S. Appleton's pamphlet, Cf'he Family of Merriam aJ Massachus~tts ( 1892 ), has been for a number of years the only Merriam in the­ London Direaory, and, during a residence in London of nearly thirty years, has only come across English representatives of the name two or three times. About twenty-five years ago there was in the London DireBory the name of William Merriam ( since dead) whose father came from Maidstone in Kent. It is remarkable that on the 27th June, 1889, there died at Linton, in Kent, John George Merriam, stonemason. Linton is the next parish to Boughton Monchelsea, where among many Merriam records we have the will of John Meryham, mason, 1455. One may almost assume that the name of John and the trade of mason had gone from father to son for over four hundred years. The only place in Great Britain, where apparently the name has lived on, is Pembrokeshire, where there was in the sixteenth century a manor of Meriham or Myrryam; and where, that is to say in the town of Tenby, about fifteen years back, Mr. John Merriam was living, who knew that his family had been resident in Pembrokeshire for one hundred and thirty years. In America, on the other hand, the descendants of the three brothers have become, if not very numerous, at any rate a fairly good number, if one may judge by the comparative frequency of the name. It is a matter for the greatest regret that the birth and marriage of William Merriam, the father _of the emigrants, cannot be definitely traced. We have at Horsmonden, an adjoining parish to Tudeley, the baptism of a William Merriam in 1580, which is a possible date, but we cannot be certain of his identity. Of the four places mentioned in William Merriam's will, where he held property : Goudhurst, • Vl Preface . Yalding, Hadlow and Tudeley, search has been made for the births of the emigrants, and could these be found no doubt the father could be identified. Unfortunately neither Goudhurst, Yalding nor Hadlow registers have them, and the old register ofTudeley disappeared during the civil war, shortly after the emigration of the brothers, and has never since been found. William Merriam, we know held land in Tudeley, and was a clothier. Tudeley had a cloth Industry in his day, and we may not unreasonably suppose that in Tudeley he married, and that there his children were born. Mr. Appleton notes that the will of James Burgess, ofTudeley, 1590, mentions his son-in-law, William Merryan, who when one takes into account the casual spelling of that time, may be the father of the emigrants. He is also probably the William Merriam mentioned In the will of Robert Piper, of Tonbridge, 1616, as his brother-in-law; Tonbridge being the next parish to Tudeley, and Robert Piper being also a clothier. On page 84 will be found the record of the sale of the land of George Merriam, one of the emigrants, in the year of his emigration. Of Merriam records, more have been found than could perhaps be expeffed in view of the distinffly middle-class position of the family. The number of wills may be considered large; the parish entries are very numerous, and begin in I 558, the first year of ~een Elizabeth, and the first year in which parish registers were regular!y kept, and the first mention of the name, I 29 5, is far enough back to satisfy almost anyone. In faff this date is very near the time of the intro­ duction of surnames in families not noble. No effort has been made to search for records after 1650; a few have been found incidentally and inserted. The yeomen of Kent, to which class many of those whose wills are ·here recorded belonged, have a creditable place in EngHsh History, coming to the front a good deal as archers in the French wars. They were usually freeholders and men of substance as the old rhyme testifies : "A Knight of Cales, a Gentleman of Wales, And a Laird of the North Countree. A Yeoman of Kent with his yearly relit Can buy them up all three." The· discovery of the original spellings of the name : Meryham, Merryham, Meriham, altogether settles the question of its meaning. Both Merry and Ham are Saxon words. They are defined in Bosworth's Dittionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language, London, I 808, as follows: . Preface. Vil Mirige, myrig, adj. Merry, pleasant; hilaris, jucundus. Ham, a home, house, dwelling; domus. Ham, as a termination, in the names of places, denotes a home, dwelling, village. Canon Bardsley in his book, English Surnames, in a note to Chapter VI., says: '' We never use 'Merry' now in relation to sacred things, though our English Bible does. The fact is, the word has somewhat sunk in the social scale. Few preachers would say as Bishop Bradford could, quite naturally in his day, ' The Lord for Christ's sake give us merry hearts to drink lustily of his sweet cup.'" With regard to Ham, Canon Isaac Taylor, in Words and Places, Chapter VII., "The Anglo-Saxon," says:-" The suffix 'ham,' which is very frequent In English names, appears in two forms in Anglo-Saxon documents. One of these, ham, signifies an enclosure ; that which hems in-a meaning not very different from that of ' ton ' or worth. These words express the feeling of reverence for private right, but ham involves a notion more mystical, more holy. It expresses the sanctity of the family bond; it is the home, the one secret (geheim) and sacred place. In the Anglo-Saxon Charters we find this suffix united with the names of families-never with those of individuals. This word, as well as the feeling of which it is the symbol was brought across the ocean by the Teutonic colonists, and it is the sign of the most precious of all the gifts for which we thank them. It may indeed be said without exaggeration, that the universal pr~valence throughout England of names containing this word home, gives us the clue to the real strength of the national character of the Anglo-Saxon race. What a world of inner difference there is between the English word home and the French phrase chez-nous I It was this supreme reverence for the sanctities of domestic life which gave to the Teutonic nations the power of breathing a new life into the dead bones of Roman civilization." , In the light of the opinions of these good authorities, we can best and quite fairly define in modern English the meaning of Merryham as " Happy home," and it would be difficult, with a free choice, to desire a better origin for a name. The first man, Laurence, John, or William, who in order to distinguish him from other Laurences, Johns, or Williams, came to be known as Laurence, John, or William of the Happy Home, must have been an ancestor of whom one may be proud. It would of course be a great satisfaction to flnd out where the original " Happy Home" was, but it appears very unlikely that this ca·n definitely be discovered. Nearly all the places where Merriams lived, as shown in the wills and other records: Goudhurst, Horsmonden, .. Vlll Preface . Boughton Monchelsea, Maidstone, Y alding, Cranbrook, are in Mid­ Kent, and Merriams appear to have been most numerous in the Weald of Kent, as the beautiful hilly region in the south of Mid-Kent, and formerly running into Sussex, is called. There is a very ancient reference, which but for one little letter s would exaBly suit our case. I allude to an Anglo-Saxon Charter of King Ethelred : the grant of Meresham, mentioned in Furley's History of the Weald of Kent, volume i., page 8 5.

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