My Lückhard ancestors are my only link to colonial North America and the conflicts that created both Canada and the US.
They left the Rhineland with the mass emigration of 1709, arrived in London in mid-July and finally reached New York a year later. Initially they settled in the West Camp (Ulster Co.), but they were living in Beekman’s Precinct by 1717. Most of their children died young.
At some point in the 1760s the family – now known as Lighthart – joined other Beekman families with Loyalist sympathies and moved to Albany County, where they farmed at Stillwater until the American war of independence uprooted them again.
Like many other Loyalists, the Lighthearts found their permanent home in Upper Canada, finally completing the journey they began a century earlier.
This family belongs to two groups that have been well studied – the Palatine immigrants of 1710 and the United Empire Loyalists – and there is quite a bit of information available about them. Henry Jones‘s incredible research on the Palatine families of New York and Frank Doherty‘s multi-volume study of the settlers of the Beekman Patent, among others, have been invaluable sources of information and leads. However, major studies of the Palatine group seem to have largely ignored Canadian records, and as a result much of the information published about the Lighth(e)arts is incomplete; in many cases I have reached different conclusions.
May 2019
NOTE: We are looking for Lightheart men (in the direct male line) who have done a y-DNA test or would be willing to do one. Please contact me if that’s you.
Links:
Lightheart-Lückhard family 