Before literacy became widespread, spoken surnames were passed down through families and, on the few occasions that the surname needed to be written down, the person doing the writing would decide on the spelling that best represented the name spoken. In those times the use of different local dialects and vocabularies was widespread throughout the UK and particularly so in Cornwall, the home county of many Trease ancestors, which has an East to West spread of about 80 miles across difficult terrain. As a result, the spelling of the surname of early Trease ancestors varied greatly. These spelling variations are not obvious and make research difficult until the researcher is familiar with them.
If you were born in the UK or Australia and have the surname or middle name 'Trease', the chances are you are a descendant of William Trease,
who married in St Gennys, North Cornwall in 1797. William chose to spell his surname 'Trease' and all his descendants traced so far in the UK
and Australia, have done likewise. No other family members either of his generation or earlier generations who adopted the spelling 'Trease'
appear to have any surviving descendants and so far no other unrelated UK families using the name 'Trease' have been found. The surname is as a result uncommon,
particularly in the UK. The surname is much more common in the USA but so far no USA Trease families have been found with UK roots.
Readers who encounter the name tend to pronounce the name 'trees' to rhyme with similarly spelt words like "please" and indeed this is the
way the family members now normally pronounce their name, apart from a few Australians who sometimes pronounce the name 'Treece'.
Although the surname is now generally pronounced "trees", William almost certainly would have pronounced the name "Trays".
An elderly couple who lived in Warbstow, which is close to St Gennys, and who knew the last of the Treases living in Warbstow until the late
1950s, stated that the name was pronounced locally "Trays". Also William's grandson, Henry Trease, stated in the late nineteenth century that the "a" had been put in for a reason and the
name was NOT to be pronounced 'Treece'.
If William intended his surname to be pronounced "Trays", it seems strange to those of us who are unfamiliar with Cornish dialects that he
should choose the spelling "Trease". The answer seems to be that many Cornish dialects tend to stress the second syllable. For example,
the Cornish village of 'Golant', which elsewhere in England would generally be pronounced 'GO-lant' with the stress on the first syllable, is
locally in Cornwall pronounced 'g'LANT with the stress on the second syllable and virtually no vowell sound on the first syllable.
In this way the name "Trease" (treated as a monosyllabic word outside of Cornwall) would be treated in parts of Cornwall as having two syllables
with the stress on the second syllable and thus be pronounced as 'tr'AYS with virtually no vowell sound on the first syllable.
Although William's descendants use the spelling 'Trease' with pronunciation 'Trees', other related family descendants have ended up with differently spelt
and pronounced surnames.
Descendants of William's Uncle Samuel adopted the spelling 'Treays' for their surname and today tend to pronounce
the name 'TREE-ays' with the stress on the first syllable. This spelling was first used in St Gennys in 1774, and if at that time the second syllable
was stressed in a similar way to that suggested for 'Trease' then the name would have been pronounced 'tr'AYS and the two apparently different
surnames, Trease and Treays, can be seen to be spelling variations of one and the same surname. Other contemporary spellings used in St Gennys were
'Treise' (1740-50), 'Trays' (1743), 'Tress' (1766), and 'Trayes'. (1772)
Descendants of William's Uncle Peter adopted the monosyllabic spelling 'Trayes', and today this is probably pronounced closer to the way the name
was pronounced in William's time. Going further back still to the late sixteen hundreds, Samuel Trease of Crediton's descendants, who are thought to be related,
eventually adopted the surname 'Traies' which is pronounced identically to 'Trayes'.
The family roots can be traced back to a family who farmed in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries at Pattacott, which is in the parish of
North Petherwin, West of the River Tamar, on the Devon/Cornwall borders, and was then in Devon but is now in Cornwall.
The earliest ancestor traced so far was called Walter and appears to have been born about 1500. The surname was then spelt 'Treys', "Treis", "Treas",
"Trease", "Tres", "Trees" and "Trese". No parents, brothers or sisters for him have been found in this parish. The nearest likely relative found so
far is a 1577 reference to a widow Alice Treys living at Castle Milford, a water mill (not a castle) situated in Cornwall 1.5 miles to the
west of Pattacott. Both her and Walter's families used the same range of spellings in the sixteenth century but in the sixteenth century
the Castle Milford family adopted the spelling 'Treise' (probably as their family became literate).
Other early references to similar names can be found in other parts of Cornwall. The earliest references found so far are to two farmers,
John Treys - who had a 28 acre farm at Kenston, and William Treys who had a 32 acre farm at Donnhouse (also known as Boradon), both in the
parish of Stoke Climsland, on the Devon Cornwall borders, about 12 miles south of Pattacott in the period 1350 - 1400. So far no definite
connections between any of these other families and the family at Pattacott have been found.
So far researchers have failed to come up with a definitive answer. Unlike most of England, surnames remained fluid in Cornwall until
relatively late and did not become 'fixed' in West Cornwall until the 16th century. The Cornish tended to be named after the place in
which they dwelt and the christian name of their father. For example, John, son of Thomas, living at Pendarvis would be called John Thomas
Pendarvis and if he moved to Tremayne he would then be called John Thomas Tremayne.
However, the earliest Trease family members traced so far lived on the Devon/Cornwall borders
which was an area of Saxon rather than Celtic/ Cornish influence where these conventions did not apply but of course they
may have not been long established there.
The prevalent perception today is that in those early times family members would live in the same area as their parents. Whilst that may have
been the case for agricultural labourers, the sons of yeoman farmers, such as some of these early Treases, who did not inherit the family
farm, had to seek their livelihood wherever they could. For example, when Michael Trease, yeoman of Pattacott, died in 1645 and his farm
passed to his son Michael, two sons appear to have relocated to Crediton.
If the name is of Cornish origin, it is possibly derived from the Cornish 'tre-res' which some researchers believe means 'house
by the ford'. They observe that the placenames 'Treres' in Cury Parish (1284 and 1302)and 'Treures' or 'Treris' (St Just in Penwith 1263 or 1416)
are both known as "Trease" today. Both places are in the extreme South West of Cornwall and seem to
confirm the alteration from "Treres" to present day "Trease" but it is a conundrum why the surname 'Trerise' survives
whereas the placename changes to 'Trease'. If this derivation is correct it
opens the possibility that the surname "Trerise" is yet another version of the name "Trease".
It is a fact that in the West of Cornwall the surnames "Trerise" and probable associated derivatives are encountered whereas "Trease" and its derivatives
are rare to non-existent.