John Burton

From the Hyten family archive; subject is John Burton (1730–1784), a 7× great-grandparent of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his birth, life, and death in Dent, Yorkshire, England, his marriage to Sarah, and his daughter Agnes Elizabeth Burton. Notable: represents the English Yorkshire branch of the family, predating any emigration to America.

John Burton (1730–1784) was born in the year 1730 in the parish of Dent, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, and there he lived out the whole of his fifty-four years. He died on the 22nd of February, 1784, at Broadmire, in that same Dale, and was thus among the elder Yorkshire-born forebears whose entire span was traced within a single English parish.

Dent, in the 18th century, lay in the upland country of the Yorkshire Dales — a region of stone-built farmsteads, hill pasture, and hand-knitting cottage industry famed throughout that age. The dalesfolk of Dent were noted for their close-knit chapelries and their attachment to ancestral holdings, many families remaining upon the same lands across several generations. Broadmire, where John died, was one of the scattered farmsteads of the parish, and the name itself reflects the boggy upland character of the Dale.

John was united in marriage to Sarah, whose record survives in the family papers under the name Sarah Burton Mason. Of their union there is preserved the name of one daughter, Agnes Elizabeth Burton, born in 1754 and died in 1794, who carried forward the line. Through Agnes the Burton blood of Dent passed into the subsequent generations of the family, eventually joining, by paths recorded elsewhere in this register, the kindred that would in time cross the Atlantic.

The particulars of John's occupation, faith, and standing in his community are not preserved in the present archive, though the Yorkshire Dales of his time were chiefly the home of small statesmen-farmers and graziers, and the Burtons of Dent are remembered in the family memory as among the older stock of that quiet upland country.

John Burton was the compiler's 7× great-grandfather on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line, standing among the deepest English roots traced in the Hyten family archive.