Phillip Harris

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Phillip Harris (1670–1734), a 9× great-grandparent of the compiler in the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his birth and death in colonial Richmond County, Virginia, his daughter Anne Magdalene Harris, and the broader context of the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Tidewater Virginia frontier in which he lived.

Phillip Harris (1670–1734) was born in Farnham, Richmond County, Virginia, in the year 1670, and died in that same parish on the seventeenth day of March, 1734, having passed the whole of his recorded life within the bounds of the Virginia Tidewater. His birth fell during the closing decades of the seventeenth century, a time when the colony of Virginia was still relatively young, and when Richmond County itself had not yet been formally organized—it would not be carved from Old Rappahannock County until 1692. Farnham Parish, in which Phillip drew both his first and last breath, was among the older Anglican parishes of the Northern Neck, a region of tobacco plantations, river landings, and tightly knit planter families settled along the broad lower reaches of the Rappahannock River.

The era in which Phillip lived was one of profound change for the colony. He came of age during Bacon's Rebellion's long aftermath, witnessed the consolidation of the great Northern Neck proprietary under the Fairfax line, and lived into the reigns of Queen Anne and the first two Georges. By the time of his death in 1734, Virginia had become one of the most populous and prosperous of the English colonies in North America, and Farnham Parish was a settled community of established households.

From Phillip is recorded one daughter, Anne Magdalene Harris, born in 1704 and surviving until 1767. Through Anne the Harris blood was carried forward into succeeding generations, and it is through her line that the family ultimately descends to the compiler of this register.

Phillip Harris stands as a 9× great-grandfather of the compiler in the paternal-grandfather (PP) line, and is among the earliest colonial Virginia forebears whose dates are preserved with precision in this archive.