This study of the Jarred surname has come about by many researchers tracing our Australian family back to the United Kingdom.... where, some 20 years ago, we reached a brick wall around the late 1700's, where there exist about 5, so far unrelated, Jarred families in Norfolk.

This brick wall seems to have come about due to a combination of rural illiteracy and itinerant farm workers & accent changes, coupled with a traditional reuse of just a few forenames, creating large spelling variances as those verbal surnames were written in the Parish registers. Throw in poor handwriting and an incomplete record set and we have a nut which no Jarred family has yet cracked.
I am have started a DNA study to help crack this puzzle and am actively looking for male descendants who are interested in being tested.

Nearly all pre 1900 Jarred's in Norfolk were agricultural labourers with many being shepherds, a few farmed their own land, and one line were blacksmiths with a few shopkeepers.

All of the Australian Jarred, Jared & Jarrads are descended from one marriage in Norfolk, except one family of Queensland Jarreds, and a family of Melbourne Jarrads - both whom also originated in Norfolk, UK.

The earliest Jarred surname history is concentrated in Norfolk and certainly within East Anglia, although there are a few spattered occurrences earlier in other counties recorded in the LDS church database, I believe these are deviants of the more common southern English "Jarrad" family.
I also believe the Norfolk coastal Jarrads of Gt. Yarmouth are related to the southern Jarrads, as they have always been geographically remote from the existing Jarreds and sea faring runs hot in both northern & southern families.

At the enclosure of rural land, coupled with creeping agricultural mechanisation of the 1800's, most Norfolk Jarreds migrated farther afield, many like my own branch, to Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Yorkshire, before emigrating to Australia. These counties have small populations even today.

There are numerous occurrences of Jarred migration from Norfolk to New Zealand, Canada and the USA.
The USA has a large occurrence of the Jarred spelling, but is rather problematic as many of today's Jarreds seem to be variants from Jarretts and Garretts rather than an original Jarred.

All my data is currently in Microsoft Excel format, although I am researching software to compile an interactive website in the near future.

This study will, by necessity, equally include the variants Jared, Jarrod & Jarrad as these four variations form the major family branches known today. These variations have arisen from the many misspellings in the original Norfolk Parish registers when used officially for emigration purposes during the mid/late 1800's.
It seems particular family branch spelling did not stabilise until the mid to late 1800's. Even in Australia and the USA spellings were regularly transposed in the early days.

The Jarrad surname in this study is a true variation of the Norfolk Jarred. It remains totally separate from the numerous southern English Jarrad's, who have also emigrated around the world.
Our data does include this spelling's BDM records, but no family linage has been attempted through the parish & census records, however I am happy to help descendants of this family in their research.

Jarred may itself be a variant of the much more common, and often interwoven, Jarrett, Jarratt & Jarrold.... which may be a variant of the earlier Garrard with its many spellings.
Most of the records transpose any and all of these surname spellings constantly...even among siblings of the same family in the same church so it is difficult to work out what is normal, variant & deviant!

With a surname consisting of many double letters and vowels there have been a rather large number of deviant spellings in both original recording and subsequent transcriptions - in addition to the already mentioned examples there has been Jerred, Jerrad, Jerrerd, Jerrard, Jassad, Jarredd, Jurred, Jarrud, Jaued, Jarrah, Jarrid, Jerrid...and I'm sure some others I have forgotten!

This has necessitated all spelling occurrences prior to c1800 being recorded and eventually analysed to prevent loss of "real" members.
I would be very interested to communicate with anyone researching the Jarrett & Garrard families of Norfolk.