Elizabeth Symons

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Elizabeth Symons (1632–1678), an 11× great-grandmother of the compiler in the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers her baptism in Nantwich, her parentage, her marriage to Edward Smith, her daughter Elizabeth Hester Smith, and her death in Macclesfield. Notable: Elizabeth lived her entire life in Cheshire, England during the turbulent decades of the English Civil War and Restoration.

Elizabeth Symons (1632–1678) entered the world in Nantwich, Cheshire, England, where she was baptized on or before the 2nd of September, 1632. She was the daughter of John Symons (1602–1664) and Jane Locker (1600–1658), a Cheshire couple whose own roots extended through the salt-making market towns of that ancient county. Nantwich in the year of Elizabeth's birth was a prosperous town of timbered houses and brine pits, only recently rebuilt after the great fire of the previous century, and it was still bound closely to the rhythms of the established Church and the trades of inland Cheshire.

Elizabeth came of age during one of the most tumultuous periods in English history. The outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 placed Cheshire squarely in contested territory, and Nantwich itself was the site of a significant Parliamentary victory in January of 1644. The years of her young womanhood unfolded under the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and her later life passed during the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy — a period of religious settlement, plague, and renewed prosperity in the English provinces.

Elizabeth married Edward Smith, and from that union came at least one recorded daughter, Elizabeth Hester Smith (1665–1767), who would later carry the family line forward under the surname Johnson and who, remarkably, was recorded as living past the centennial mark — a longevity exceedingly rare in that age.

Elizabeth Symons died before the 6th of December, 1678, in Macclesfield, Cheshire, having removed at some point from her natal town of Nantwich to that silk-weaving town on the eastern edge of the county. She was forty-six years of age at the time of her death, and her burial in Macclesfield placed her among the Cheshire dead of the late Stuart period.

Elizabeth was the compiler's 11× great-grandmother on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line.