The Shreve
Project

Thomas Sheriff of Plymouth, MA

Thomas Sheriff, also associated with the Shreve surname, is the founding ancestor of the American family line chronicled in L. P. Allen’s The Genealogy and History of the Shreve Family from 1641 (1901). The Library of Congress describes that volume as a genealogy of his descendants.

Allen cites Thomas in a Plymouth legal action dated December 7, 1641, and a Portsmouth conveyance dated December 10, 1666. The Order of the Founders and Patriots of America also lists Thomas Shreve/Sheriff with Plymouth in 1641 and Portsmouth in 1675.

This project begins its American Shreve family story with Thomas. These records support his role as a colonial progenitor; they do not establish that every American bearer of the surname descends from him.

Sources: Library of Congress catalog; Allen’s 1901 genealogy; OFPA ancestor list.

Shreve: surname meaning & etymology

Shreve is an English occupational surname with Anglo-Saxon linguistic roots, a variant of Sheriff associated in surname dictionaries with Norfolk.

Etymology and meaning

Root words: Old English scīr means “shire” or administrative district; (ge)rēfa means “reeve,” an official or steward. Together, scīrgerēfa means “shire reeve,” the origin of the word sheriff.

Shire reeve: The title referred to the king’s local administrator in a county, with responsibilities that included law enforcement, revenue collection and county courts. Sheriff could become a surname through an occupation or a nickname.

Spelling variants: Related forms include Shrieve, Shreeve, Shreeves, Shreves, Shrieves and Shrive. The table below distinguishes the forms recorded in different sources.

Historical and geographic context

Early records: SurnameDB cites medieval English records for Huge le Sirreve in 1212 and Alan Sciriue in 1219. These illustrate early related surname forms; they are not a documented pedigree connecting those individuals to Thomas Sheriff.

American lineage: The Shreve family history project places Thomas Sheriff’s arrival in Massachusetts between 1635 and 1638. This page centers on Thomas Sheriff of Plymouth, MA, and the American family line traced in Allen’s genealogy. His Portsmouth, Rhode Island, connection is described in the American roots section.

Notable bearers: Henry Miller Shreve was a steamboat inventor and river-navigation pioneer. Richmond H. Shreve was an architect in the firm Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, which designed the Empire State Building.

Historical context sources: SurnameDB; Shreve family history project; Empire State Building history.

Related surnames and recorded spellings

Recorded forms span several centuries and sources. This list gathers the variants found in the cited references; it is not a claim that every spelling belongs to one documented bloodline.

Variant sources: Dictionary of American Family Names (2022), via Geneanet; Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland (2016), via Ancestry; Shreve family history project; SurnameDB: Shrieve; Bardsley dictionary excerpts.

Etymology sources: FamilySearch: Shreve and FamilySearch: Sheriff (surname entries drawing on the Dictionary of American Family Names); historical surname dictionary excerpts.

About this project

The Shreve Project explores surname origins and the American family line associated with Thomas Sheriff of Plymouth, MA. Historical records and source-based research guide this ongoing family heritage project.

Contact & research contributions

I welcome historical records, references, and research that may shed light on Shreve heraldic origins or help trace my ancestry beyond Thomas Sheriff of Plymouth, Massachusetts—the earliest ancestor I have been able to identify in my research. If you have information to share, please contact me by email, telephone, or text message. Copies of original records and source citations are especially appreciated.