William Caywood Hyten

From the Hyten family archive; subject is William Caywood Hyten (1790–1882), a 4× great-grandparent of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his Maryland birth, parentage, marriage, son, removal to Indiana, longevity, and era context spanning the early Republic through Reconstruction. Notable: a long life of ninety-two years bridging the founding generation and the post–Civil War era, and the Maryland-to-Indiana westward migration.

William Caywood Hyten (1790–1882) was born on the seventeenth of January, 1790, near Hagerstown in Washington County, Maryland, the son of Josiah Hyten (1769–1816) and Rebecca Caywood (1775–1849). His middle name preserved his mother's family surname, a custom common in the early Republic and one which carried the Caywood line forward in remembrance through succeeding generations of Hytens.

William came of age in western Maryland during the years following the ratification of the Constitution, a region then characterized by mixed farming, small mills, and the steady traffic of the National Road, which after 1811 would carry many Maryland families westward across the Alleghenies into the Ohio Valley. The death of his father Josiah in 1816, when William was twenty-six, fell within that very period of migration, and like many of his generation William eventually removed westward, settling in Hendricks County, Indiana — a county organized in 1824 and named for Governor William Hendricks, which drew a considerable population of settlers from the Upper South and the Mid-Atlantic states during the second quarter of the nineteenth century.

William married Elizabeth Darnall, known familiarly as Eliza. Of their union is recorded the son Thomas N. Hyten (1841–1901), through whom the line of the compiler descends. The Darnall surname was an old one in Maryland, suggesting that William's marriage may have been formed before the family's westward removal, though the archive does not specify the place of their wedding.

William lived to the remarkable age of ninety-two, dying on the twenty-third of June, 1882, at Danville, the seat of Hendricks County, Indiana. His long life spanned the presidencies from Washington to Arthur, encompassing the War of 1812, the opening of the western territories, the Civil War, and the early years of Reconstruction. He outlived his wife and many of his contemporaries, a patriarch whose memory bridged the founding era and the industrial age.

William was the compiler's great-great-great-great-grandfather on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line.