Joan Lowe

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Joan Lowe (c.1590–1675), a 12× great-grandmother of the compiler on the paternal-grandmother (PM) line. This entry covers her birth and death in St Martins Parish, London; her marriage to Richard Thomas Leazing; her daughter Joan Leazing; and the broader context of early modern London during the Stuart and Restoration eras.

Joan Lowe, born about 1590 in St Martins Parish, London, England, and laid to rest in that same parish on the tenth of October, 1675, stood among the earliest English forebears recorded in the compiler's paternal-grandmother line. By the reckoning of generations, she was a twelve-times great-grandmother of the compiler, her name preserved across more than four centuries through the careful keeping of family record.

The London of Joan's lifetime was a city of extraordinary upheaval. She was born late in the reign of Elizabeth I and lived through the accession of the Stuart kings, the civil wars of the 1640s, the execution of Charles I, the Protectorate under Cromwell, and at last the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Her later years would have unfolded against the calamities of the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666, both of which scoured the parishes of the capital and reshaped the city in which she had spent her days. The parish of St Martins, situated in the bustling heart of London, was a community of tradesmen, artisans, and laborers whose lives were closely bound to the rhythms of church and market.

Joan was joined in marriage to Richard Thomas Leazing, and of their union is recorded a daughter, Joan — also styled Joane or Jone — Leazing, born in 1610 and departed in 1674. It is through this daughter that Joan Lowe's line descended toward the families who would, in later generations, cross the Atlantic and take root in the American colonies, eventually contributing their blood to the Hyten lineage.

Though little of her personal circumstance survives beyond the parish register entries of her birth and burial, Joan Lowe remains an anchor in the long English foundation of the compiler's ancestry, standing as a twelve-times great-grandmother on the paternal-grandmother line.