Bartholomew Bryant

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Bartholomew Bryant (1737–1832), a 7× great-grandparent of the compiler in the paternal-grandmother (PM) line. This entry covers his birth in colonial Maine, parentage, marriage to Ellen Toppan Brookings, his daughter Patience, his long lifespan spanning the colonial, Revolutionary, and early Republic eras, and historical context of coastal Maine settlement.

Bartholomew Bryant (1737–1832) was born on the 11th of July, 1737, in Scarborough, in the county of York, in what was then the District of Maine within the Province of Massachusetts Bay. He was the son of John Bryant (1716–1753), a father whose own life concluded when Bartholomew was but sixteen years of age — an early loss that would have shaped the young man's passage into adulthood in the rugged coastal settlements of mid-eighteenth-century Maine.

Scarborough in that period was a frontier town of fishermen, farmers, and tradesmen, situated along the marshes and tidal inlets of the southern Maine coast. The settlements of York County had endured generations of conflict during the colonial wars with France and her allied nations, and stability there was hard-won. It was into this environment of resilience and labor that Bartholomew came of age.

He married Ellen Toppan Brookings, and from their union issued at least one recorded daughter, Patience Patricia Bryant (1765–1846), who would later marry into the Johnson family and carry the line forward. The birth of Patience in 1765 places the family squarely within the gathering tensions of the pre-Revolutionary years, when the coastal towns of Maine were drawn ever more deeply into the disputes between Crown and colonies.

Bartholomew lived an extraordinarily long life, witnessing the full span of the American Revolution, the founding of the Republic, the War of 1812, and the early decades of the new nation. By the time of his death on the 19th of June, 1832, in Machias, in Washington County, Maine, he had relocated far down east to one of the more remote and storied of Maine's coastal communities — Machias itself being a town renowned for the early naval engagements of the Revolution. He was ninety-four years of age at his passing.

Bartholomew Bryant stood as a 7× great-grandfather of the compiler in the paternal-grandmother line.