James B Foster

From the Hyten family archive; subject is James B. Foster (1813–1880), a 4× great-grandparent of the compiler in the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his birth in Vermont, the broader context of early-nineteenth-century New England, his fatherhood of Isabella A. Foster, and his death in 1880. Notable: New England origin within an otherwise westward-trending family line.

James B. Foster was born in 1813 in the state of Vermont, then a young but firmly established member of the American republic, its hills and valleys settled by the descendants of New England Puritans and by veterans of the Revolutionary generation. The Vermont of his childhood was a land of small farms, stony fields, sugar maples, and Congregational meetinghouses, where rural industry and a stern Yankee independence shaped the character of its sons and daughters. It was into this northern landscape that James entered the world, and from this New England stock that one branch of the compiler's paternal lineage would ultimately spring.

Though the particulars of his early years, his schooling, and his occupation have not come down to us through the family record, the broader currents of his lifetime are well known. He came of age during the great transformations of the early nineteenth century — the rise of the canals and railroads, the westward migrations that drew so many Vermonters out toward New York, Ohio, and the territories beyond, and the gathering tensions that would erupt in the Civil War of his middle years.

Of his marriage the present record preserves no certain detail, though he is known to have been the father of at least one daughter, Isabella A. Foster, born in 1839. Through Isabella, the Foster line was carried forward into the next generation and ultimately into the family the compiler now chronicles.

James B. Foster died in 1880, having lived sixty-seven years and witnessed the passage of the American nation from the era of Madison and Monroe to that of the Gilded Age. He stands in the family record as a 4× great-grandparent of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line, the Vermont-born forebear from whom the Foster name and inheritance descend.