A - Acreman

acreman noun

acre·​man | \ ˈā-kər-mən \

plural acremen\ ˈā-​kər-​mən \

Definition of acreman

: the leader of the plow team on a medieval English manor

Acreman funnily enough was one of the contenders for the letter A in my other plan, so I was surprised to see it in a list of occupations.

I don't know if the Acreman in my tree got his name from his occupation or even if he was a ploughman. It is quite a long way back and records then aren't easy to find and if they are they are written in that odd spidery old english style, and sometimes in Latin.

The first Acreman I have is John born circa 1695 in the parish of Ashbrittle, Somerset. On the 22nd of April 1720 in the parish church at Ashbrittle he married local girl Jane Davys. She was the daughter of Thomas Davys and Judith Burchell of Hagley Bridge.

Information on Ancestry says that  between 1840 and 1920 people with the Acreman surname were found in census records in the USA, Canada, Scotland and the UK with the majority being found in the UK. In 1891 just over half of the Acremans in the UK were in Somerset. 

Perhaps some of John's siblings or cousins or their descendants emigrated to Canada or the USA or maybe one of his and Jane's children. They had at least three children, identified so far on church records. A few generations later in 1876 one of their great grandsons Samuel Pyne, a Tailor, farewelled England and took his family to Utah, USA. I wonder was he joining other family members who had gone before him.This branch of the tree was a new discovery made through RootsTechConnect in part of RootsTech2020, so there is still some work to do to substantiate all of the links.