Family name origins & meanings
- Scottish and northern Irish : probably an Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Nialláin (see Nealon).
- Family tradition holds that John Kneeland, born in 1575 in Glasgow, Scotland, came with his brother Edward to Massachusetts Bay about 1630 on board one of his father’s vessels freighted with provisions for the Pilgrims, and that he settled near Boston. His grandson Samuel Kneeland (1697–1769) was a printer who published the Boston Gazette from 1741 to 1755.