Thomas Foster

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Thomas Foster (1783–1874), a 5× great-grandparent of the compiler on the paternal-grandmother (PM) line. This entry covers his English birth in Yorkshire, transatlantic relocation to coastal Maine, marriage to Mercy Stevens, his son Henry W. Foster, and era context. Notable: English immigrant origins; remarkable longevity of ninety-one years spanning the Federalist era through Reconstruction.

Thomas Foster (1783–1874) was born on the seventh of February, 1783, in Kingston upon Hull, a venerable port city set upon the estuary of the Humber in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. His was an extraordinarily long life, spanning more than nine decades and bridging two worlds — the maritime England of King George III in which he first drew breath, and the post-Civil War American republic in which he passed away.

Kingston upon Hull, at the time of Thomas's birth, was one of the foremost commercial harbors of England, a center of whaling, shipping, and North Sea trade. The closing decades of the eighteenth century saw considerable emigration from such English ports to the shores of British North America and the young United States, as families sought land and livelihood across the Atlantic. Thomas was among those whose lives traced this passage, settling ultimately in the coastal reaches of Maine.

He was married to Mercy Stevens, and from this union came at least one recorded son, Henry W. Foster (1815–1892), whose birth in the second decade of the nineteenth century places the family firmly within the early national period of American life. Maine in those years was a frontier of timber, fisheries, and small coastal settlements; it would attain statehood in 1820, shortly after Henry's birth, ushering in the era in which the Foster family would establish its New England roots.

Thomas Foster died on the first of August, 1874, in Centerville, Washington County, Maine, having attained the venerable age of ninety-one years. His life had encompassed the American and French Revolutions, the Napoleonic Wars, the War of 1812, the westward expansion of the United States, the Civil War, and the early years of Reconstruction — a remarkable span of history witnessed by one man.

Thomas was the compiler's 5× great-grandfather on the paternal-grandmother (PM) line.