Hi is For Huguenot

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 H for Huguenot. What is a Huguenot ancestor?

Philippe Casier from Calais to New Netherland 1660

The Huguenots had long been persecuted in their homelands. Many families, in terror, fled for other lands after the fall of La Rochelle and Montauban. The West Indies, inviting because of its climate and fruitfulness, was becoming the refuge of many Huguenots for whom the cold region of Canada had no attractions. Removals to these islands had been going on under the direction of a company formed at Paris in 1626, under M. D'Enantbus, who the year before had visited the island of St. Christopher in a brigantine from Dieppe. There he planted the first colony in 1627. 

In 1635, Martinique was occupied by a hundred old and experienced settlers from St. Christopher, including Phillippe Casier and his wife Maria Taine. But D'Enambue died. In 1640 Jesuit missionaries arrived at Martinique where there were almost a thousand French, "without mass, without priest,". Having been reluctantly admitted by the governor and the people, the Jesuits heightened the public dissensions which broke out in the islands and which grew so violent five years later, especially in Martinique, that many of the Huguenots were glad to get back to Europe. 

Many of them went to the Netherlands, some of them, as the Casier family of Calais, eventually finding safe haven at Harlem, New York. Philippe Casier and David Uziele sailed on the Gilded Otter in 1662. They were listed on the manifest as:

• Philip Cassier, farmer from Calais, wife and 4 children, 23, 16, 12 and 3 yrs
   
• David Usilie, farmer from Calais wife and nursing child

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.