Anna Katherine (Hoffman) Brecht (abt. 1663 - abt. 1740)

Born about 1663 in Schriesheim, Kurfürstentum Pfalz, Heiliges Römisches Reich

Wife of Johann Michael Brecht — married 29 Jul 1684 in Mannheim, Baden, Heiliges Römisches Reich

Descendants

Died about 1740 at about age 77 in Pennsylvania

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Biography

Anna Katherine (Hoffman) Brecht has German Roots.

Anna was born in 1663 in Schriesheim-an-der-Bergstrasse, a market town in the Palatinate (now Mannheim, Baden, Germany). She was baptized on 27 Sep 1663. She was the daughter of Hans Yost Hoffman (village councilman) and Christina Frank. On 29 Jul 1684 she married Johannes Michael Brecht. They had nine known children.

After Johannes died in 1719 she sailed to America with sons Michael and Stephen on May 6, 1726. They went to America as the Germans from Palatinate had suffered from decades of war, five years of bitter winters and summer droughts. They were invited to the New World first by William Penn and then by England's Queen Anne in 1709. Most families who left Schreisheim were of the Reformed (Calvinist) faith because of deep religious pressure at home.

They sailed to New York, settling first at Schoharie, but were in Heidelberg Twp, Lancaster County, PA before April 1728, when Michael was married. It is here in PA she died some time after 1728. The exact date is unknown. It is also unknown where she is buried.

Children:

1. Anna Margaretha Brecht (17 Jun 1685) married 1715 Caspar Durst

2. Appolonia Brecht (9 Mar 1686)

3. Anna Elizabeth Brecht (27 May 1688) may have died 1707

4. Balthasar Brecht (26 Feb 1691 - Oct 1703)

5. Johann Stephan Brecht (17 Feb 1693 -1747) of whom later

6. Susanna Margarethe Brecht (12 Jun 1695) married 1723 Gabriel Roescher, emigrated 1731

7. Johannes Brecht (17 May 1699 - Feb 1756); married Anna Margaretha Roemer; emigrated 1731 and lived in Bucks County, PA

8. Anna Katharina Brecht (22 Mar 1702 - 24 Jul 1790) m.1727 John DeHuff (d.1751) who are buried at the Moravian Church in Lancaster, PA

9. Johann Michael Brecht (28 May 1706 -13 Sep 1794) m. Apr 1728 Margareta Simone (1708-1778). They had 10 children in Berks Co, PA

Research Notes

Anna Katherine probably didn't leave Schriesheim due to religious pressure, and she and her children probably didn't ever live in Schoharie, New York. That group arrived in New York much earlier, in 1710.

She appears in Hacker's Eighteenth Century Register of Emigrants from Southwest Germany as Anna Catharina Brecht, a widow with two sons, from Schriesheim, emigrating in 1726 to America. The sons are not named there.

There are two other entries for Brechts from Schriesheim in Hacker:

• Stefan in 1737, going to America; and
• Niklas in 1738, going to ?.

^[1]

There is also an extensive entry for her, her husband and her sons Michael and Stephen in Rhineland Emigrants, by Don Yoder. That source confirms the information provided here.^[2]

Sources

1. ↑ HACKER, WERNER. Eighteenth Century Register of Emigrants from Southwest Germany to America and Other Countries. Apollo, PA: Closson Press, 1994. p. 50.
2. ↑ Yoder, Don, editor. Rhineland Emigrants, Lists of German Settlers in Colonial America. Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc. 1981. p. 4.