Margaret Stannillis

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Margaret Stannillis (1598–1626), an 11× great-grandmother of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers her birth in Belfast, her parentage, her marriage to Hugh Glasford, her sole recorded child Jane, and her early death. Notable: roots in early seventeenth-century Ulster during the Plantation era.

Margaret Stannillis, born in 1598 in Belfast, County Antrim, Ireland, and departed this life in the same city in 1626, stands among the earliest forebears recorded in the compiler's paternal-grandfather line. She was the daughter of Richard Stannells, who himself died in 1620, six years before his daughter's own passing. Of her mother, the family record preserves no name, and of any siblings the archive is likewise silent.

Margaret's lifetime fell within one of the most consequential epochs in the history of Ulster. Belfast in the early seventeenth century was a town in the midst of profound transformation, shaped by the Plantation of Ulster begun in 1609, during which Scottish and English settlers were established across the northern Irish counties. Antrim in particular drew heavily from Lowland Scotland, and the surnames recorded in this branch of the family — Stannells and Glasford alike — bespeak that Scots-Ulster milieu that would in later generations send so many of its descendants across the Atlantic.

Margaret was joined in marriage to Hugh Glasford, and from this union the archive records one daughter, Jane Glasford, born in 1626 — the very year of her mother's death. It is sobering to observe that Margaret's life closed at no more than eight-and-twenty years, very likely in connection with the perils of childbirth that claimed so many women of her century. Her daughter Jane would survive into her sixtieth year, dying in 1685, and would in time marry into the Calvert family, carrying forward the line that descends, through many intervening generations, to the compiler of this register.

Though the particulars of Margaret's daily life, her faith, her household, and her character lie beyond the reach of the family record, her place within the lineage is secure: she was the compiler's eleven-times-great-grandmother on the paternal-grandfather line, and a daughter of seventeenth-century Belfast.