Gilbert E. Hicks\Hix

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Gilbert E. Hicks/Hix (1585–1640), a 12× great-grandparent of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his birth in Thornbury, Devon; his marriage to Elizabeth Townes; his son Richard Edward Hicks; his death at Bridgerule, Devon; and Elizabethan/Stuart-era English context. Notable: among the earliest documented forebears in the Hyten archive, predating the family's American migration.

Gilbert E. Hicks, recorded variously in the family papers under the older spelling Hix, was born on the 21st of May, 1585, in the parish of Thornbury, Devon, England, and died on the 23rd of September, 1640, at Bridgerule, in the same county, having lived a span of some fifty-five years. He stands among the earliest forebears preserved by name in the Hyten archive, a 12× great-grandfather of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather line.

Gilbert came into the world during the reign of Elizabeth I, in the latter quarter of the sixteenth century, when Devon was a county of small farming parishes, weaving villages, and a seafaring coast that had lately sent forth Drake, Raleigh, and the men of the Armada years. Thornbury and Bridgerule both lay in the rural reaches of Devon near the Cornish border, a country of hedged fields, parish churches of weathered stone, and tenant agriculture that had changed but slowly across the generations. By the year of his death, England had passed through the reigns of James I and into the troubled rule of Charles I, with the kingdom standing on the eve of the Civil Wars that would convulse the parishes of the West Country.

Gilbert was joined in marriage to Elizabeth Townes, and of their union the archive preserves the name of a son, Richard Edward Hicks (sometimes recorded as Hix), who was born in 1617 and lived until 1660. Through this Richard the line was carried forward across the generations and, in time, across the Atlantic to the American branches from which the compiler descends.

No further particulars of Gilbert's occupation, estate, or religious affiliation are preserved in the family record, and the present account is therefore confined to what the dates and parish names disclose. He was the compiler's twelfth-great-grandfather on the paternal-paternal line.