Background

There are scattered records with the THERRELL surname (with many different spellings) in the 1600s and 1700s in Massachusetts, North Carolina and South Carolina. However, to our knowledge, no one has been able to trace our lines with certainty beyond a known Mississippi or South Carolina ancestor who lived well into the mid-1800s. We hope to establish a relationship between the Mississippi and South Carolina THERRELLs and find others with the same or a variant surname who can help us push our knowledge back into the earliest years of our country and even to our country of origin.

Through DNA we have proved our linage back to Richard Thorla/Thorlow/Thorley who migrated from England to Newbury, Essex, Massachusetts in the mid-1600's. As the family migrated to the southern states, the name and spelling changed to Therrell.