Elizabeth HUSSEY

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Elizabeth Hussey (1645–1747), a 10× great-grandmother of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers her birth in colonial Maryland, her remarkable longevity, her daughter Sarah, and the broader context of 17th-century Charles County and the Port Tobacco settlement. Notable: extraordinary lifespan of approximately 102 years spanning the entire colonial era.

Elizabeth Hussey, born about the year 1645 in Portobacco, Charles County, in the Province of Maryland, and departed this life on the fifth day of June, 1747, in Port Tobacco Parish of the same county, stands as one of the earliest and longest-lived ancestors recorded in this register. Her span of years, reaching approximately one hundred and two, was extraordinary in any age, and the more so in a colonial settlement where disease, childbirth, and the rigors of frontier life claimed so many before their middle years.

The Port Tobacco region of Charles County, established along an inlet of the Potomac River, was in Elizabeth's youth among the principal tobacco-trading settlements of the Maryland colony. Founded under the proprietorship of the Lords Baltimore, the county had been organized only a few years before her birth, and her lifetime would witness the transformation of a thinly populated tidewater outpost into a settled and prosperous parish. She lived through the reigns of seven English monarchs, from Charles I to George II, and saw the gradual establishment of the Anglican parish church at Port Tobacco that would eventually claim her in death.

From the records preserved in this archive, Elizabeth was the mother of Sarah Hines Luckett Darnall Robey, born in 1668 and departing in 1738. Sarah's several recorded surnames — Luckett, Darnall, and Robey — suggest a life marked by multiple marriages, a not uncommon circumstance in an era when widowhood came early and remarriage was both customary and necessary. Through this daughter, the line of descent carries forward into the generations whose names follow in this register.

The particulars of Elizabeth's parentage, of any husband she may have taken, and of the circumstances of her remarkable old age are not preserved in the documents available to the compiler. What remains is the simple and striking testimony of her dates, and of the daughter who carried her blood into the generations to follow.

Elizabeth was the compiler's 10× great-grandmother on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line.