Thomas I Freshwater

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Thomas I Freshwater (1633–1694), a 9× great-grandparent of the compiler in the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his birth at Heybridge Hall in Essex, England, his parentage, his transatlantic settlement in colonial Virginia, his marriage to Joan Haselock, and his son and heir. Notable: 17th-century English emigrant to the Virginia Colony, ancestor of the American Freshwater line.

Thomas I Freshwater (1633–1694) was born on the 28th of March, 1633, at Heybridge Hall in the county of Essex, England, the son of Edwardi Freshwater (1603–1660) and his wife Susan (1611–1643). His early years unfolded in an England convulsed by civil war, regicide, the Interregnum, and the eventual Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 — a turbulent epoch in which many of the gentry and yeomanry of Essex looked across the Atlantic toward the rapidly expanding tobacco colonies of the Chesapeake. Thomas was but ten years old when his mother Susan died in 1643, and a young man of twenty-seven when his father Edwardi followed in 1660.

At some point in the course of his life, Thomas crossed from England to the Virginia Colony, settling ultimately in Rappahannock County along the great tidewater river of the same name. Seventeenth-century Rappahannock was a frontier of tobacco plantations, river landings, and small parish settlements, peopled by English emigrants of varied station who came in search of land and livelihood under the headright system of the Virginia colony.

Thomas married Johanna, called Joan, Haselock, and from this union came at least one recorded son, Thomas II Freshwater (1672–1726), through whom the Freshwater line continued in colonial Virginia and onward into the American republic.

Thomas I Freshwater died on the 7th of September, 1694, in Richmond, Rappahannock, Virginia, having lived sixty-one years and bridged in his own person two worlds — the parish life of Caroline England and the riverine plantation society of the early Chesapeake. He stands among the earliest transatlantic forebears recorded in this register.

Thomas was a 9× great-grandfather of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line.