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The chronicles of the Ackynhead family show that the name was first used in the Scottish/English Borderlands by the Strathclyde-Britons. It was a name for a person who lived in a barony in Lanarkshire where one of the first records was dates to 1372, when Robert II granted the lands of "Akynheuide" in Lanark to John de Maxwell in 1372. Convallus de Akinhead was recorded as witness to another land grant in the same year. 1
This web page shows only a small excerpt of our Ackynhead research. Another 218 words (16 lines of text) covering the years 1296, 1376, 1444, 1489, 1673, 1676, 1697 and 1699 are included under the topic Early Ackynhead History in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
The origin of rules governing the spelling of names and even words is a very recent innovation. Before that, words and names were spelled according to sound, and, therefore, often appeared under several different spelling variations in a single document. Ackynhead has been spelled Aikenhead, Akenhead, Akynhead, Akynheued, Aikkenhead, Achenhead and many more.
Notable amongst the family at this time was Thomas Aikenhead (c.1676-1697), a Scottish student from Edinburgh who was prosecuted and executed at the age of 20 on a charge of blasphemy; he was the last person in Britain to be executed for that charge. He was the son of an apothecary at Edinburgh and was described as 'not vicious and extremely studious.' "His religious opinions became unsettled by the perusal of 'some atheistical writers,'...
Another 73 words (5 lines of text) are included under the topic Early Ackynhead Notables in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible.
The persecution faced in their homeland left many Scots with little to do but sail for the colonies of North America. There they found land, freedom, opportunity, and nations in the making. They fought for their freedom in the American War of Independence, or traveled north to Canada as United Empire Loyalists. In both cases, they made enormous contributions to the formation of those great nations. Among them: Elizabeth Achenhed who settled in Jamaica in 1774.