John Symons

From the Hyten family archive; subject is John Symons (1602–1664), a 12× great-grandparent of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his birth in Tarporley, Cheshire, marriage to Jane Locker, his daughter Elizabeth, his death at Nantwich, and the context of early-17th-century Cheshire, England. Notable: an English forebear whose generation lived through the English Civil War era.

John Symons (1602–1664) was born in April of 1602 in the parish of Tarporley, a market settlement in the western county of Cheshire, England. Cheshire in the opening years of the seventeenth century remained a region of agricultural villages and small market towns set within the broader landscape of the Cheshire Plain, where salt production, dairying, and the weekly market sustained the local economy. It was into this older England — still under the reign of Elizabeth I in the months of his birth, and soon to pass under the Stuart kings — that John Symons entered the world.

In the course of his adult life, John was joined in marriage to Jane Locker, and from their union came at least one recorded daughter, Elizabeth Symons, born in 1632 and living until 1678. Through Elizabeth, the Symons line was carried forward into succeeding generations of the family, eventually reaching the compiler's own paternal-grandfather branch.

John's lifetime spanned a period of profound upheaval in English history. He would have known the reign of James I in his youth, the troubled reign of Charles I in his middle years, the English Civil Wars of the 1640s, the Commonwealth and Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell, and at last the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Cheshire itself was contested ground during the Civil War, with Nantwich — the town in which John would end his days — serving as a notable Parliamentary stronghold and the site of a significant battle in 1644.

John Symons died on the 6th of January 1664 at Nantwich, Cheshire, having lived to the age of sixty-one. He was laid to rest in the county of his birth, never having departed from the Cheshire countryside that had cradled his entire life.

John was the compiler's twelve-times great-grandfather on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line.