F is For French Ancestor

Olive Tree Genealogy is continuing a new Alphabet Genealogy series of blog posts. I'm not following the usual way of going A-Z surnames. Instead I will create a one word "tag". Then I will share an ancestor (mine, my husband's, an inlaw's or one of my children's) who fits the tag

Today's letter is F. Do you have a French ancestor in your lineage? I do. In fact I have several.

Sophia De Roche was born in France 21 May 1748. Jacob Burkholder (a Mennonnite born in Switzerland) and Sophia (a French Huguenot)  fled religious persecution in Switzerland  to come to Pennsylvania in 1765 on the ship Myrtilla.

Jacob and Sophia Burkholder were the first settlers in Hamilton Ontario Canada on land called the Burkholder Settlement. A monument to them was erected in 1949. Jacob filed a petition for land where he states arrived July 1794, applied for land 7 August 1794.

A few of my other French ancestors were:

David Demarest
 David de Maire, [Demarest] from Picardy, and Wife and four children 18, 12, 6, 1 yr od were recorded on the ship Bonte Koe arriving in New Netherland (New York) in 1663

Philippe Casier
 Philippe Casier (my 10th great-grandfather) of Calais France, is first mentioned in the Huguenot settlement of Martinique in the French West Indies. In 1635 a party of old and experienced settlers had gone to Martinique from the neighbouring island of St. Christopher, which had been settled by French Huguenots in 1627. In 1645, Philippe Casier and others left the island and returned to Europe. Casier went first to Calais, then to Sluis, Flanders where his daughter Hester was born. Some time after 1652, Philippe and his family moved to Mannheim in the Lower Palatinate of Germany, along with other Huguenots and Walloon Protestants.

David Uziele
David Uzille was from Calais but his family came originally from near La Moussaye (south of St. Malo) in lower Brittany. He was a farmer, born about 1635. He married Marie Magdalina, the eldest daughter of Philippe Casier from Calais, before 1659. David Usilie, as he was recorded, emigrated from Calais on the ship the Gilded Otter in 1660

Simeon LeRoy dit Audy
Simeon LeRoy dit Audy was born in 1640 in Creance, Normandy, France.  About 1681 or 1682 Simeon and his wife took some of their family to Kingston,New York. Nine of their eleven children were recorded in Canada. Several of the sons began using the surname Larroway. My branch were Loyalists arriving in Upper Canada during the American Revolution

Jacques Hertel 
Jacques was the father of Ots-Toch, the Mohawk woman who married Cornelis Van Slyke in New Netherland (present day New York)

and more!

52 Ancestors: Jacob Burkholder and the Haunted Family Cemetery

Amy Johnson Crow has a new challenge for geneabloggers called Challenge: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. Amy challenges genealogists to write about one ancestor once a week. I'm having fun with this and I hope you are too!

Jacob Burkholder, my 5th great-grandfather, was born in Switzerland in 1747, but his father moved the family north to Mannheim, Germany on the lower Rhine River to escape persecution. Here, they joined other Palatines and Jacob learned weaving. 

Jacob and his two brothers John and Christian sailed for America in 1765 on the ship Myrtilla. They landed at Philadelphia, 21 September 1765.

Several French Huguenot refugees were among the Myrtilla's 81 passengers, including Abraham and Sophia De Roche. Sophia was a French girl, supposedly of Huguenot descent. Jacob married Sophia De Roche in 1765 in Lancaster Co., Pennsylvania. Their signatures may be seen in Pennsylvania, where they took the oath of allegiance to the British Crown in 1765. 

Following the American Revolution, Jacob Burkholder wished to remain under British rule. After his eldest sons made an exploratory trip to the head of Lake Ontario, Jacob, Sophia and family left Pennsylvania for Upper Canada (now the province of Ontario). With their son Christian as their guide, they came by Conestoga wagon drawn by oxen, crossing at Buffalo and arriving at Niagara in present day Ontario province, in October 1794. They obtained 800 acres on the Hamilton mountain and were the first family to settle east of the Caledonia highway. 

A family cemetery was established by 1800, the earliest interment being Jacob Burkholder's son Joseph, who died of a broken back after falling from a shed roof. This cemetery is said to be haunted with a spectral light that appears every time someone nearby dies. No one has ever figured out what the light is or why it appears every so often on top of the church.

The family gave its name to a small community, the Burkholder settlement, which developed at the intersection of what is now Mohawk Road and Sherman Avenue in Hamilton, Ontario. 

 In 1839, a small log building was erected to serve as both church and school. It was replaced by the Mountain Chapel in 1850. This was renamed Burkholder Methodist Church in 1886 and after 1925, became known as Burkholder United Church.  In 1947 a monument was erected to honour Jacob and his wife Sophia.

I have found Jacob recorded under many spellings, including Borghonder. My Burkholder name daughters out with Jacob's granddaughter Elizabeth (born ca 1816 in Hamilton to David Burkholder and Elizabeth Gingrich) who married Richard Vollick. It is kind of interesting to note that Elizabeth was one of 16 children and that 4 of the Burkholder siblings married Vollick siblings.