Directory of Veryards

Where does the surname 'Veryard' come from, and what does it mean? Some say that it is an Old French name meaning Glassworker, which was brought over to England by Huguenot refugees. Others say that it is a Devonshire name meaning Ironworks. According to Wendy, the first DeVereyard came to Cornwall on the Spanish Armada, and become a smuggler.

Perhaps all these explanations are true - and the Veryard surname is a combination of similar names from several roots.

The name was certainly used in Devonshire before the Huguenots arrived in England. The earliest known occurrence of the name records the christening of one Richard Veryard at Axminster in Devon, on April 20th, 1568. A few years later, on April 22nd, 1583, John Veryard married one Lettice Akerman at Branscombe in Devon. (There is a web page maintained by the Branscombe family, which summarizes the parish registers of St Winifred's Church in Branscombe.)  There is also a family tree traced back to the marriage of Elise Veryard & Rawlyn Clapp at Saint Winifrid's church, Branscombe, Devon on the 27th of June 1569.

Fran has traced a number of lines of descent from these early Veryards, and these are documented on a separate page.

In the seventeenth century, Dr Ellis Veryard, from Colyton in Devon, visited Egypt. His rather curmudgeonly remarks on his trip (dated 1678) may represent the first occurrence of Veryards in print. He is the oldest Veryard I've found quoted on the Internet; he can be found on a page called: 'Remarkable and bizarre notes about Egypt by early travellers'), which quotes from a book by Martin R. Kalfatovic, Nile notes of a howadji: a bibliography of travelers' tales from Egypt, from the earliest time to 1918 (Metuchen, N.J. [etc.]: Scarecrow Press, 1992). ISBN 0-8108-2541-4

An 1830 directory of Gloucestershire has three entries for one Robert Veryard of Bristol: as a hemp and flax dresser, as a rope and twine maker, and as a sack and sacking maker.

Gretel tells me that there is a Veryard in the roll of honour of one of the Scottish Regiments at Edinburgh Castle.

Finally, we must mention one R.G. Veryard who, with Ebdon in 1961, discovered a 26-month meteorological pattern called the Quasi-Biannual Oscillation (QBO).