(1)Mercy Stevens

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Mercy Stevens (1767–?), a 5× great-grandparent of the compiler on the paternal-grandmother (PM) line. This entry covers her birth in coastal Maine, her parentage in the Stevens-Holbrook union, her marriage to Thomas Foster, and her place within the late colonial and early Federal era of Washington County. Notable: among the earliest documented New England forebears in the PM line.

Mercy Stevens was born in 1767 in Addison, Washington County, Maine, a coastal settlement on the eastern frontier of what was then the District of Maine within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She was the daughter of Edmund Stevens (1738–1790) and Lydia Holbrook (1742–1775), placing her among the earliest documented New England forebears in the compiler's paternal-grandmother line.

The Washington County of Mercy's childhood was a remote, sea-bound region of fishing harbors, lumbering camps, and scattered farmsteads, settled largely by families of English Puritan and dissenting stock who had pushed northeast from older Massachusetts towns. The American Revolution unfolded during her girlhood, and the Maine coast — vulnerable to British naval activity — felt the war with particular acuteness. The loss of her mother Lydia in 1775, when Mercy was only eight years of age, came at the very opening of that conflict, and her father Edmund would die in 1790, when Mercy was in her early twenties.

Mercy was joined in marriage to Thomas Foster. Of this union is recorded a son, Henry W. Foster (1815–1892), through whom the Foster line descends into the compiler's pedigree. The substantial gap between Mercy's birth year and Henry's suggests he was among the younger of her children, in keeping with the large families common to rural New England households of that era, though only Henry is preserved here by name.

The date of Mercy's death has not been recovered, though she is associated in the family record with Centerville, Washington County, Maine — a township neighboring her birthplace and lying within the same coastal district where the Stevens and Foster families had taken root. She passed her life, so far as the record indicates, within the bounds of a single Maine county, witnessing in her years the transition from colonial subject to citizen of the young American republic.

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