♂Johannes Light

Johannes Light (about 1682 – 1759) was a settler of Lebanon Township, in what was then Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who bought 274 acres on a branch of the Quittapahilla Creek in December 1738. He was probably the fifth great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his son Henry Light (1738–1806).

Arrival and land

The ship Winter Galley, Edward Paynter master, sailed from Rotterdam and cleared last from Deal, in England, before reaching Philadelphia with 139 men and 113 women and children. On 5 September 1738 the men took the oaths of allegiance, and among them, most likely, was Johannes himself, entered as Hannis Light, aged 56, who signed both lists of the oaths by mark. On 29 December 1738 Caspar Wistar^W of Philadelphia and his wife Katharine sold Johannes Light of Lancaster County 274 acres on a branch of the Quittapahilla Creek in Lebanon Township, by lease and release^W, for £82 4s. The deed was not recorded until 13 April 1751.

The Old Fort

The country around the Quittapahilla filled quickly with Mennonite and other families. In 1742 Johannes is said to have built a large stone house on his land, and for many years the Mennonites held their monthly meetings for worship in it; one Mennonite family record calls him Bishop John. By family tradition the house sheltered the women and children of the surrounding country during the French and Indian War, as many as sixty families at one time, and it came to be known as the Old Fort. It was still standing in 1896, by then within the city of Lebanon.

Death and the division of the land

A John Light senior, apparently Johannes, was taxed in Lebanon Township in 1750 and again in 1755, the second time beside a John Light junior and a Jacob Light. Johannes died without a will, not long before 19 November 1759, and on that day his six children, all of full age, divided the land by deed: Martin, John, Henry, Barbara and Jacob Light, and Anna, the wife of Rudolph Meyer of Tulpehocken Township in Berks County. The other five sold Henry 155 acres and 47 perches of it, and Jacob another part for £200.

Notes

The passenger of 1738

The Hannis Light of the Winter Galley is taken here to be Johannes because a Johannes Light of Lancaster County bought the Lebanon Township land less than four months after the ship’s men took their oaths. His age on the list, 56, gives the birth year of about 1682. No other Light is listed among the ship’s men, which fits a father whose sons were then still boys. His name is written Hannis Light, Joanes Light and Johanes Lycht on the ship’s three lists, Johannes Leicht in the abstract of Wistar’s deed, John Licht or John Light in a county history of 1844, and Johannes Light in the deeds of 1759.

The family’s own account

Moses Light’s The Light Genealogy in America (1896) tells it differently. In its account John Light and two of his brothers, “natives of Palatinate, Germany”, left for America about 1710 or 1720 (the printed date is unclear), and John settled in Lebanon Township, where his sons Jacob and Martin were born in 1723 and 1725. The book cites no record for this, and the ship’s list and the deed of 1738 point the other way: if Johannes landed in 1738, his older children were born in Europe. No record names the place he came from. The book names four sons, Jacob, Martin, Henry and John, and gives his land a patent dated 2 April 1742, where the deeds have the purchase from Wistar in 1738.

The stone house

I. Daniel Rupp’s history of Berks and Lebanon counties (1844) has Wistar selling several hundred acres to John Licht in 1738, and records that “the massive three story house, with a ‘hipped roof,’ erected by John Licht in 1742, was a regular monthly meeting place, where the Mennonites met for worship.” The 1896 family history describes a large two-story limestone house, built in 1742, where the Mennonites met for worship and held monthly meetings during the French and Indian War; it calls the house the place of safety for the women and children of the surrounding country, known as the Old Fort, and adds that by report sixty families once took refuge in it at the same time. Neither account cites a record. Croll’s Ancient and Historic Landmarks in the Lebanon Valley, a compiled landmarks history, gives the same year, 1742, for the stone house Johannes erected on his land, which it calls a dwelling and fortification west of Tenth and Maple streets in Lebanon, and it says he held services in it as a Mennonite. The 1896 history calls the house the Old Fort; Croll calls it Light’s Fort.

His wife and the title of bishop

A Mennonite family card for Henry Light (1738–1806) calls his father Bishop John Light and his mother Maria Kreider. The name Maria comes from a gravestone in the family’s burial plot, which calls a Johannes Licht who died in 1798 “ein Sohn des Johannes und Maria Licht” (a son of Johannes and Maria Licht); the 1896 family history says that her name was not known.

The tax lists

Rupp prints Lebanon Township’s lists of taxpayers for 1750, with a “John Licht, sen.” and a John Licht, and for 1755, with “Jno. Light, jr.”, Jacob Light and “John Light, sen.” That the elder John is Johannes is likely, but the lists do not say so. Egle’s History of the Counties of Dauphin and Lebanon, a compiled county history, prints the 1750 Lebanon Township assessment list with the entry “Licht, John, Sr.” (Lebanon part, page 129).

The line to Ora Emogene Walrath

The deeds of 1759 name a Henry Light among Johannes’s children, and when the children of Henry Light (1738–1806) released his plantation to their brother Joseph in 1807, their deed traced its title from Johannes through the sale of 155 acres and 47 perches to Henry Light in 1759. The next link down, from Henry to his son Henry Light (died 1830), rests on an 1896 family history, a Mennonite family card and DNA shared between descendants, not on a record of the time.

The date of the purchase

A transcript of the 1807 release dates Wistar’s deed to Johannes 29 December 1758; the deeds of 1759 and the abstract of the deed itself give 29 December 1738.