James Smith

From the Hyten family archive; subject is James Smith (b. 1740, d. unknown), a 7× great-grandparent of the compiler in the paternal-grandmother (PM) line. This entry covers his Scottish birth, transatlantic migration to coastal Maine, marriage to Jean Adam, and his place within a broader pattern of 18th-century Scottish emigration. Notable: Scotland-to-Maine immigrant ancestor; settled in the Jonesboro / Washington County district.

James Smith (1740–date of death unrecorded) stands among the earliest documented forebears in the compiler's paternal-grandmother line, holding the position of a seventh great-grandparent. He was born on the thirty-first day of December, 1740, in Scotland, and his life carried him across the Atlantic to the rugged coastal district of Jonesboro, in Washington County, Maine, where the records place his death, though the precise date has not survived in the family papers.

His emigration fits within a well-documented movement of Lowland and Highland Scots to the British North American colonies during the middle decades of the eighteenth century. Pushed by agrarian upheaval, religious currents, and the dislocations that followed the failed Jacobite risings, thousands of Scots sought new ground in Nova Scotia, the New England frontier, and the Carolinas. The northeastern coast of what would become Maine, then a contested district of Massachusetts, drew settlers attracted to its fisheries, timber, and modest farming valleys along the tidal rivers. Washington County, where James eventually came to rest, was among the easternmost and most thinly populated districts of the future state.

James married Jean Adam, a name itself unmistakably Scottish, suggesting either that the union was formed in the old country before emigration or within a tightly knit Scots community in the New World. Of their issue, the family register preserves the name of one son, James "Francie" Smith (1760–1829), through whom the line descended to the compiler.

Beyond these spare particulars — a birth date in Scotland, a marriage, a son, and a final resting place on the Maine coast — the details of James Smith's occupation, the circumstances of his crossing, and the year of his death remain unrecovered. He nevertheless anchors the Scottish strand of the family's ancestry. James was the compiler's seventh great-grandfather on the paternal-grandmother line.