Wyman/Clifford/Saxton

The Wymans of Hertfordshire first appear in the Seventeenth Century records and form two distinct families living in the eastern part of the county. There were the Westmill Wymans and the Barkway Whymans in the early years. By following the fortunes of the two families you can draw the conclusion that they were separated not only by geography, but also developed and spread their interests independently of one another. The Barkway Wymans by the mid-Eighteenth Century were consistently spelling their name with the "h," while those of Braughing and the Hormeads spelled their name without it. This difference holds today. Another variant is that the Barkway Whymans to the north were traders and labourers, while the Wymans in the south were yeoman farmers.

The Westmill Wymans moved first to Braughing, where Thomas (the elder brother of John and Francis who emigrated to America) founded the Wyman dynasty which subsequently migrasted to the north, south and east. From Braughing, Thomas' sons and grandsons moved to Standon, Aspeden, Great Munden, Little Hadham, Bishop's Stortford, the Hormeads, Albury, Throcking and Little Munden. This enterprising family were mostly farmers who leased large farms usually 100 acres and more and trained their own sons. When the sons reached the age of twenty-one, they in turn took leases on neighboring large estates. Time and again this pattern is repeated until in the first half of the ninteenth Century, Wyman farmers held most of the Hormead farms, a Dassells' farm, an Albury and a Throcking farm. These were the Wymans who spread out from Braughing. The Wymans left in Braughing, though numerous in the Ninteenth Century, were reduced gradually to earning their livings as carpenters, butchers and farm laboures.

There were a number of reasons for the decline in the Braughing Wymans' fortunes. In the second half of the Eighteenth Century the eldest sons had been placed on farms outside Braughing parish. In the early Ninteenth Century Wymans who had bought houses, small holdings, and parcels of land in the village, stipulated in their Wills that these were to be sold and the proceeds divided equally amonth all their children. This democratic procedure meant tiny shares for all that were of use to none. At the end of the Ninteenth Century, despite the increasing number of children to survice infancy, there were fewer Wyman boys than girls, and the males who survived seem to have lost the ability and vigour of their forefathers. One very good reason for lack of Wyman sons to carry on the tradition of the old yeoman farmers in the Hormeads was emigration of two brothers to New Zealand from Little Hormead in 1878. They were the last of the enterprising yeoman stock. In the 1890's agriculture declined due to a disastrous series of wet summers and lost crops. By 1900 hardly any Wymans were occupying the large farms in the northeast part of Hertfordshire where once they had been such good and sucessful farmers.

Early in the Twentieth Century families became scattered. A lot of the local labor force went to help build the northern suburbs of London, and to work on the railways driving steam engines. World War I took a terrible toll on the small villages where the Wymans lived and of those fortunate to return to England, many took jobs outside the county for the demand for farm labourers in the area had shrunk. A second World War mearly intensified this situation, until there is now no Wyman left in the Hormeads or Braughing and only one in Barkway.