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I recently had the opportunity to read some of Rev. Edgar Cannon Prettyman's 1968 book, "The Prettyman Family in England and America." (It's at the Allen County Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, which has a remarkable, open-stacks genealogy collection where you could spend days and still want to come back for another visit.)
For those of us descended from one or more of the men named Prettyman Merry, it is of more than passing interest where the given name originated. There were few Merrys in late-1600s Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, but even fewer Prettymans. It's obvious that there was an early and intimate relationship between the two families.
The author points out that an early explorer of Maryland, in 1634, was Captain Robert Yong. Yong's sister was married to Robert Evelyn, and the mother of two sons, Robert Evelyn and George Evelyn, who also came to Maryland with Yong (Robert) or came to Maryland in 1636 as Surveyor General (George). He suggests that their presence might be related to a John Prettyman's arrival in Maryland by 1641.
Robert and George Evelyn had a cousin, John Evelyn, "the noted Diarist", who married Mary Browne, daughter of Sir Richard Browne and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Prettyman (Knight, of Driffield, England).
Sir Richard Browne's grandfather, Rev. Prettyman reports, was "clerk of the green cloth to King James I." When I read that, I thought he meant Sir Thomas Merry, who held that position. But no, this is one of Sir Thomas Merry's predecessors, an earlier Sir Richard Browne.
"The Prettyman and Evelyn families intermarried into the Browne family. In fact, three of the Pretymans [alternate spelling] married into that family about the same time."
In post 921, I pointed out a 16th-Century link (both witnesses to a legal document) between a Browne and a Thomas Mery.
I realize this is all starting to sound like a Philippa Gregory novel. The point I would like to make is that family ties and alliances were very important, to Englishmen of this era, and it may be worthwhile to explore the connections between the families over there, to explain connections between families over here. I don't think academic historians have done much of this work, because until recently it was difficult to spot all the possible links. The Internet has changed all that, and continues to provide new information. (However, time spent with books in a library can also be productive.)
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