Margaret "Margery" Lowe

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Margaret 'Margery' Lowe (c.1551–c.1586), a 14× great-grandmother of the compiler in the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers her birth and death in Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, her marriage to William Leigh, her daughter Prudence Leigh, and Elizabethan-era English context. Notable: deep English Midlands ancestry predating the family's later American migration.

Margaret Lowe, known familiarly as Margery, was born about the year 1551 in the parish of Stoneleigh, in the county of Warwickshire, England. She lived and died within the bounds of that same Warwickshire village, her recorded passing falling about the year 1586, when she would have been only in her mid-thirties. Of her parentage no certain record has been preserved in the family papers, though her surname Lowe was one long established in the English Midlands.

The Warwickshire of Margery's lifetime was the Warwickshire of the Elizabethan age. Stoneleigh itself lay in the heart of England, a parish marked by its ancient abbey lands and by the gentle agricultural rhythm of the Midlands countryside. The reign of Queen Elizabeth I, which spanned nearly the whole of Margery's adult life, was an era of religious settlement following the upheavals of the Reformation, of expanding English horizons abroad, and of flourishing letters at home. It was the world into which William Shakespeare, a near neighbor born in Stratford-upon-Avon only some miles distant, was coming of age during Margery's own years.

Margery was united in marriage to William Leigh, a connection that joined her to one of the recognizable family names of the district. From this union came at least one recorded daughter, Prudence Leigh, born about 1565 and herself surviving until 1607. Through Prudence the line carried forward, eventually crossing the Atlantic in generations yet to come and joining at length with the American branches that would in time bear the Hyten name.

Though the details of Margery's daily life, her faith, and the circumstances of her early death have not been transmitted to the present compiler, her place within the family pedigree remains secure. Margaret 'Margery' Lowe was a 14× great-grandmother of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line.