The next oldest known relative in my family tree would be of German stock, my great-great-great-great-great grandfather on my grandmother's side, Johannus Jacobus Knaufft.
Johannus was baptized on the third of February in the year 1761 at RC Church, Florsheim, Hessen, Germany. When you spend enough time hunting down proof of ancestry and then patch their lives together through births and marriages, a picture begins to unfold. Maybe it's not exactly right. Maybe it's not exactly wrong. The same can be said for any impression we might have of living relatives, friends or strangers.
My picture of Johannus is a strong and healthy lad. No doubt a first choice to the Recruiting Officers of King George III when raising 30,000 men, to fight for England in the American Revolutionary War, from the Principalities of Germany. Sometime before 1776, Johannus appears as a Soldier of the German Auxiliary.
We must return to my gene sense at this point. Johannus shows up in 1791 at Farmer Western Volt, Halifax County, Nova Scotia. Only war ready soldiers were repatriated to Europe. Those wounded were left behind. My guess is that Johannus was offered a chance to join the Empire Loyalists settling in Nova Scotia. The wounding theory is bolstered because he is reported to having died a year later, in 1792, at the prime age of thirty - though he could just as likely have been gored by a bull as another of my relatives - yet that is another story.
Johannus was married, on July 29th 1787, to Mary Gross at the Dutch Church, Halifax, Nova Scotia. They had three children.
When thinking of him, and his literal battles to get his DNA to Nova Scotia, it is humbling.
