The Tyrees

The first Tyrees appear to have been from the city of Tyre, in present day Lebanon. In the 12th century there was an Archbishop of Tyre known as William of Tyre. After the Moslems under Saladin took Jerusalem from the Christians, William of Tyre promoted the Third Crusade to wrest the "Holy Land" back from the Mohammedans. William of Tyre was a historian and wrote a notable history of the Crusades. He was born around 1130 and died sometime before 1185.

At some point some of the people who would be called Tyrees, perhaps Jews, emigrated from Tyre to France. In French poetry of the 16th or 17th century there is reference to a nobleman named Tyreus. It was fashionable for the nobility of France to select a Greek or Latin name in place of their natural names. Tyreus would be such a name and in French would be Tyree. A branch of Tyrees now living in Missouri, before that in Kentucky, have a tradition that the Tyrees came from France. A young French nobleman by that name fell into disfavor with the King of France and was forced to flee to the British Isles. Is this why books on name origins now say that the surname Tyree is from Scotland?

Family tradition of some of the Tyrees say they came from the British Isles, the southernmost island of the Hebrides chain off the western coast of Scotland is actually named Tiree. Tyrees are supposedly from the area of Scotland known as Perthshire. This is a Scottish county of 2,493 sq. miles in central Scotland centered around the town of Perth. It's a mountainous region of many lochs (lakes), wild forests, and moors (tracts of marshy wasteland). Scottish Kings were long crowned in this province at Scone. The surname MacEntyre is now considered separate from Tyree but since it means "Son of Tyree" it appears there was a link in the past.

From the British Isles the Tyrees emigrated to the British Colonies in North America and more than likely they first settled in Virginia. People with variations of the name Tyree are recorded as having been married in Virginia as early as 1761. On June 17, 1761 John Dillad married Hannah McTyre in Lancaster County, Virginia, and on December 30, 1766 John Duns Jr. married Caty McTyre in the same county. It is also recorded that John McTyre married Molly Doggett on November 21, 1782, also in Lancaster County. On Dec. 7, 1787 John Harris of Gloster, Virginia, married Frances Tyrie of Yorktown, a widow, in York County. John Tyre, 16 years old and emigrant from England, is recorded as having landed at Philadelphia in 1774.

It is also known that the Tyrees participated in the American Revolution against the British forces. William Tyre, a sergeant in Morgan's Rifles was wounded in the American assault on Quebec, Canada in the early part of the war and died in an Army hospital in Albany, N.Y. A Tyree was a Lieutenant in George Washington's army. Another William Tyre, a wagoner, with the rank of sergeant in General Horatio Gates' army. He served for six months and was present behind the lines when Gates was disgracefully defeated at Camden, South Carolina in 1780. This Tyree was born in Powhatan County, Virginia in 1752, married in Buckingham County, Virginia in 1773 or 1774, resided in Prince Edward County, Virginia when he entered the Army and spent his later years in Smith County, Tennessee where he died on September 30, 1833.

As stated, Virginia seems to have been the original point of settlement of the Tyrees in this country. To this day there are more Tyrees living in Virginia than any other State in the U.S. A distant second in number is Ohio then California,Tennessee, and Alabama. Beatrice Bayley, a genealogist living in Pennsylvania, did a computer search of seventy million names in the U.S. on a number of different surnames including Tyree. Her search indexed 1,638 Tyree families from this search. As there are about three times seventy million people in the country, it is possible there are about 5,000 Tyree surnamed families in the U.S. This is not very many and makes Tyree a relatively rare name.

Some Tyrees became well known. Evans Tyree, born in Dekalb County, Tennessee in 1854, was a bishop in the American Methodist Episcopalian Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Lewis Tyree, Born in Salem, Virginia in 1892, was a professor of law at Washington and Lee University and Rutgers University. Sir William Tyree, born in Australia in 1921, founded Tyree Industries, Ltd., and A. W. Tyree Foundation, incorporating Medicheck Referral Center and the Tyree Chair of Electrical Engineering at the University of New South Wales, Australia. John Augustine Tyree Jr., born in Virginia in 1911, advanced through the ranks to become a Vice-Admiral in the U. S. Navy. David Merrill Tyree, born in Washington, became a Rear-Admiral in the Navy. He was the Commander of the U. S. Naval Support Force in U. S. Projects in Antarctica 1959-1963. He was a member of the Legion of Merit with two oak leaf clusters. Alan Dean Tyree, born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1929 is a clergyman and member of the Council of Twelve of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Patricia Grey Tyree, born in 1942, is corporate vice-president and business director of Tyree Corporation with offices in Cleveland, Ohio. Randy Tyree is the Mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee.

Family tradition says the branch of Tyrees dealt with in this history and genealogy was founded by Hurman* Tyree who emigrated from Turkey sometime before 1822. At that time the Ottoman Empire, or Turkey, included Lebanon where Tyre is located, but to date nothing in writing has been found to corroborate the existance of Hurman or that he came from Turkey. The Father of Andrew Jackson Tyree probably did live in Virginia and then later in Tennessee, whether his name was Hurman or not. A. J. Tyree then lived in Missouri and Arkansas where he died. His descendants now live in a number of States of the Union. They spelled their name Tyre until about 1915.

By Dan Tyree

* In October 1996, by consensus of Thomas Cayce Knight, Dan Tyree, and Elinor Tyree, the name "Hurman" has been replaced by "Nathan". As Elinor notes ...

"Nathan checked out on two census checks (I visited the census files in my public library where the 1830 census had the right number of people of the right ages in Nathan's family; although the census of 1850 found Nathan's family gone, he was approximately the right age and still in the right location)."

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