Ann Query

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Ann Query (1675–1746), a 9× great-grandparent of the compiler in the paternal-grandmother (PM) line. This entry covers her birth in Stoke Wake, Dorset, marriage to John Hooper Jnr, her son William Hooper, and her death in Hilton, Dorset, with context on late-Stuart and Georgian rural England.

Ann Query (1675–1746) was born on the fourth of September, 1675, in the parish of Stoke Wake, a small downland village in the county of Dorset, England. She lived through one of the most turbulent stretches of English history — entering the world during the reign of Charles II, coming of age amid the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and passing her later years under the early Hanoverian monarchs. Rural Dorset in this era was a landscape of chalk hills, sheep-walks, and modest hamlets, where parish life and the agricultural calendar governed the rhythms of daily existence.

Ann was united in marriage to John Hooper, the younger, joining her line to the Hooper family of Dorset. From this union came at least one son of record in the family register: William Hooper, born in 1710, who would live a long life of his own (1710–1793) and who carried the lineage forward as a sixth great-grandfather of the compiler. The naming of the son after his paternal grandfather, in the English custom of the day, would have been consistent with the practices of the period, though the family register notes only his birth and lifespan.

Ann lived to the age of seventy — a considerable span for a woman of her century — and died on the third of August, 1746, in Hilton, Dorset, only a few miles from the parish of her birth. That she spent her entire life within the bounds of a small corner of rural Dorset reflects the settled, parish-rooted character of English country life before the great migrations of the industrial age. The Hooper family would remain in Dorset for further generations before the line eventually crossed to the American colonies.

Ann Query was a 9× great-grandmother of the compiler on the paternal-grandmother (PM) line.