Re: Dirck Keyser Pa Genealogy
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In reply to:
Re: Dirck Keyser Pa Genealogy
Jewell Burcham 8/26/00
My info says Dirck Gerritz Keyser (morocco leather manufacturer) (m. Cornelia Govertsz vanden Wyngaert - dau. of Mennonite elder). He was father of Dirck K. who emigrated to Germantown 1688 (this Dirck was said to be the FOURTH Dirck in the line). DGK was son of Dircksz K. who was son of another Dirck K.
The first one of family of whom there is certain knowledge is Leonhard Keyser of Scharding in Barvaria. "Suffered martyrdom by fire 3 days before Laurentii, August 1527". He was an educated man, a mass priest, but "he accepted the writings of Zwingli and Luther and went to Wittenberg, and there held converse with the two doctors; partook with the, the Lord's Supper, joined himself to the separated, cross-bearing church of the Anabaptists (he was one of the Waldenses) in 1525; he returned to Barvaria spreading the work of the gospel with great zeal and power; the end however, came as it does to all, in one form or another, in whom a higher truth of the advancing age, has its first manifestation"
"After the death of Leonhard Keyser the family when down into the Netherlands and prior to their emigration to America, lived there for a century and longer, and are identified by association and marriage, as a Holland family. They were manufacturers and business men in Amsterdam for the four generations of which we have infromation - perhaps a period of 130 years."
These quotes come from a family history published in 1888 on the bicentenial of the emigration.