William McVey

From the Hyten family archive; subject is William McVey (1695–1762), a 7× great-grandparent of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his birth and death in Edinburgh, Scotland, his parentage, his marriage to Margaret Byrne McClure, and his son Sergeant John McVey. Notable: Scottish origins of the McVey line, predating the family's eventual crossing to America.

William McVey was born on the 25th of January, 1695, in Edinburgh Parish, in the county of Midlothian, Scotland, and there too he closed his earthly course on the 9th of June, 1762, at the age of sixty-seven years. The whole arc of his life thus unfolded within the bounds of a single parish, a circumstance not uncommon for men of his station in the Scotland of that age, when the soil of one's birth was very often the soil of one's burial.

He was the son of Williame McVey, born about 1665, and of Anna Thomson, born about 1670. The McVey name, of Scottish derivation, marks the most distant footing yet recovered for this branch of the family upon its native ground. The Edinburgh of William's lifetime was a city of considerable consequence: the seat of the Scottish kirk, a centre of learning and law, and, during his later years, the cradle of that intellectual ferment which in the next generation would flower into the Scottish Enlightenment. The Act of Union of 1707, joining the parliaments of Scotland and England, fell within his twelfth year, and the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745 stirred the country in his maturity.

William was united in marriage to Margaret Byrne McClure, who in taking his name became Margaret Byrne McClure-McVey. Of their household, the record preserves the name of one son, John McVey, born in 1737, who would in due season bear the title of Sergeant and live to the venerable age of eighty-six, dying in 1823. Through this son the McVey line passed onward, in time crossing the Atlantic and entering the American story which the present register chronicles.

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