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Tier/Tyer

William Tyer

William Tyer 1760-?

Joseph Tier 1788-1834

James Tier 1811-1886

Elizabeth Wilson Tier 1836-1922

Annie Tier 1856-1927 

That’s an actual Emsworth tree in the picture there.  It’s a beautiful little town/village, on a tidal inlet, just behind Hayling Island to the east of Portsmouth, and the Tier family lived in and around it for a hundred or so years.  The older members of the family - the men we eventually get to were sailors.  And there are a very large number of them buried in Warblington (the next village) churchyard.

 

Annie Tier, the last person on our list, was not technically a Tier - or rather her father wasn’t.  But we currently don’t know who her father was, so she takes her mother’s name.  Her mother may well have been a little wild when young, but as an old lady she was a pillar of respectability.

 

Before her, we have the sailors, men who plied the coastal trade up and down the English coast and across the sea to France and Spain.  They all lived tough but eventful lives, even though they were just ‘ordinary’ people.  And the Tier name lives on in Emsworth still.

Portsmouth, Emsworth and Warblington

Tier 

meaning and origins

Very difficult to find a definitive meaning online - but I think it must be Irish and probably means regal.  I will investigate this further.  Another site implied that it was an English name related to an occupation, because it ended in er.  So a tie er I suppose - one who tied things?  The variations of Tyer and Tire certainly imply that it is pronounced that way rather than teer.

variations

Tyer, Tire, Teer

distribution in England and Wales

In 1881 the Tiers were fiercely concentrated in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, with a few in neighbouring Dorset and Wiltshire.  There was another small group up in Lancashire.  But very local this name.

Links

Emsworth and Warblington

Portsmouth

Merchant seamen

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