Roberts – Brashears
Brashears Name Origin or Meaning
None of the sources I have provide a meaning for the surname Brashears. Ancestry indicates that it is an Americanized form of French (Huguenot) Brasseur[i]. Forebears indicates that virtually all of the people with the Brashears surname live in the United States. Likewise, ForeBears indicates it is an Americanized form of Brasseur and is almost entirely in the United States. Today, individuals with the Brasseur surname live mostly in France and Belgium[ii].
Geographical
Worldwide there are approximately 3,003 people who bear the Brashears surname.
It is most prevalent in the United State where over 99 percent of the people with the Brashear surname live[iii].
My Earliest Brashear Ancestors
I don’t know where any of my Brashears ancestors were born. I believe that my fourth-great-grandmother, Rebecca Brashears, was born about 1771. She married Elias Roberts about 1786 and the two located to Tennessee in the 1790s.
Her father, Robert Samuel Brashears, appears to have been born about 1731.
His father, Robert Cager Brashears, was possibly born about 1700[iv].
His father, Samuel Brashears, was possibly born about 1670[iv].
I have not determined an immigrant ancestor, so where my Brashears came from would be entirely speculation. That said, Rebecca Brashears is number 6 on my Roberts research list, so, hopefully, I’ll be able to research her in depth by next June (2020).
My Direct Brashears Ancestors
65 – 4th Great Grandmother: Rebecca Brashears (1771-1859)
130 – 5th Great-grandfather: Robert Samuel Brashears (1731-1819)
260 – 6th Great-grandfather: Robert Cager Brashears
520 – 7th Great-grandfather: Samuel Brashears
Brashears Descendants
My records have 362 direct-line descendants of Samuel Brashears identified in my tree.
I have no known living Y-DNA descendants of Robert Samuel Brashears[v].
I have no known living mtDNA descendants of Rebecca Brashears[v].
Sources:
Ancestry – Don Taylor’s Roberts-Brown Tree accessed 6 June 2019.
Endnotes:
[i] Internet: Ancestry.Com – Name Origins – Brashears. https://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=brashears
[ii] Internet: Forebears – Results of a name search for Brasseur. https://forebears.io/surnames/brasseur
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Speculative dates based upon nothing but the age of their children.
[v] If you are a descendant of Samuel Brashears that carries his Y-DNA or a descendant of Rebecca Brashear that carries her mtDNA, I would love to hear from you.