John Scott Lynn Cox

From the Hyten family archive; subject is John Scott Lynn Cox (1625–1700), an 11× great-grandparent of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his birth in Sussex, England, his parentage, his transatlantic settlement in colonial Maryland, his marriage to Angelina Wilson, and his issue. Notable: emigrant ancestor from England to St Mary's County, Maryland in the 17th century.

John Scott Lynn Cox (1625–1700) entered the world in the village of Lindfield, in the county of Sussex, England, in the year 1625. He was the son of John Cox (1605–1690) and Mary Sicklemore (1605–1698), and he came of age during one of the most turbulent eras in English history — a period encompassing the reign of Charles I, the upheavals of the Civil War, the Interregnum under Cromwell, and ultimately the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Sussex in the early seventeenth century remained a region of small market towns, agricultural estates, and parish life closely tied to the Church of England, though dissenting religious currents stirred steadily throughout the countryside.

At some point during the middle decades of the seventeenth century, John crossed the Atlantic and established himself in the Province of Maryland, a proprietary colony chartered to the Calvert family in 1632 and notable in its early years for its policy of religious toleration, particularly toward Roman Catholics and other minorities seeking refuge from the strictures of the Old World. He settled in St Mary's County, the colony's original seat of government and the site of its first permanent English settlement at St Mary's City. There he would live out the remainder of his days, dying before the close of the year 1700.

John was united in marriage to Angelina Wilson, and of this union there is recorded at least one child: a son, John Cox (1650–1696), who carried the family name into the next generation and predeceased his father by several years. The Cox family's transplantation from the gentle downs of Sussex to the tobacco-growing tidewater of the Chesapeake placed them among the early English families to establish a foothold in colonial Maryland.

John Scott Lynn Cox stood as an 11× great-grandfather of the compiler, occupying a distant but foundational place upon the paternal-grandfather (PP) line of the family.