Gilbert E. Hicks\Hix

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Gilbert E. Hicks (also rendered Hix) (1585–1640), a twelve-times great-grandfather of the compiler on the paternal-paternal (PP) line. This entry covers his English origins in Devon, his parentage, marriage to Elizabeth Townes, his son Richard Edward Hicks, and contextual notes on early seventeenth-century Devonshire. Notable: among the earliest documented English forebears in this branch.

Gilbert E. Hicks, whose surname appears variously in the registers as Hicks and Hix, was born on the 21st of May, 1585, at Thornbury in the county of Devon, England, and departed this life on the 23rd of September, 1640, at the parish of Bridgerule, in that same western county. He stands among the earliest documented English progenitors of the paternal-grandfather line preserved in this family record.

He was the son of Gilbert Hix II and his wife, Marion Warde, and so carried forward a Christian name that had already passed through at least two generations of the Hix household — a custom not uncommon among English families of the Tudor and early Stuart periods, when given names served as living memorials of lineage. The Devonshire of his lifetime was a country of small market towns, parish churches, and tenant holdings, set between the moorlands and the sea. It was an era shadowed by the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I, and by the religious and civil tensions that would, only two years after Gilbert's death, erupt into the English Civil War.

Gilbert was united in marriage to Elizabeth Townes, and to this union was born at least one recorded son, Richard Edward Hicks (sometimes rendered with the numeral 15 in the older transcriptions), who lived from 1617 until 1660 and who carried the family line forward into the next generation. Bridgerule, where Gilbert passed from this life, lay on the border of Devon and Cornwall, a quiet parish whose registers preserved the names of farming families across the centuries.

Though the details of his trade and daily occupation have not survived in this archive, his place in the lineage is secure. Gilbert E. Hicks was the compiler's twelve-times great-grandfather upon the paternal-paternal line.