| Notes |
- Gottfried Zerfass, Palatine, came to Philadelphia from Rotterdam, Germany in the ship 'Glasgow', qualified September 9, 1738.
By W.K. Williams: Johann Gottfrid Zerfass was born in the village of Hundsbach, about equally distant from Kaiserslautern, Wiesbaden, and Koblenz, in Rhineland Palatinate, Germany. He was baptized in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the nearby town of Meizenheim on 7 December 1702, the fifth of seven known children born to a shoemaker, Hans Henrich Zerfass, and his wife, Anna Elisabeth Renner.
Gottfrid apparently grew up in Hundsbach. At age 22, on 10 April 1725, he married Maria Elisabeth Hellwich. She was about 20. This marriage, as most of the other religious rites of the family, was performed in the same church, at Meizenheim, where he had been baptized as an infant.
Gottfrid and Elisabeth remained in Hundsbach until 1738. During that time four children were born to them: Johann Ulrich, Maria Barbara, Johann Adam, and Anna Elisabeth. Unfortunately, Adam and Elisabeth died during the Summer of 1732, just seven days apart, on 29 June and 6 July, respectively.
In the spring of 1738, Gottfrid's family and the families of two of his fellow villagers, left Hundsbach for America. They were merely three families among a few thousand of the dukedom of Zweibruken that emigrated during the year to the new country of Pennsylvania. Four months after their departure from Hundsbach, this little group of Palatinates arrived in Philadelphia aboard the ship "Glasgow" and immediately took the oath of allegiance to the British government, since Pennsylvania was then a British colony.
The next we know of Gottfrid is that he is listed as one of the first settlers in Salisbury township, in Bucks (later Northampton, now Lehigh) County, Pennsylvania. There is evidence that Gottfrid and Elisabeth's last child, Johann Adam (Susannah's father), was born in Salisbury Township. The only record we have of his birth and baptism were recorded by him nearly sixty years later, in which he states that he was born on 25 January 1742 and was baptized eight days later.
Gottfrid was forty when Adam was born and probably had three living children - Ullrich (15), Elisabeth (9), and Adam, a baby - when his wife, Elisabeth, died. He apparently remained a widower for about fourteen years, then married Anne Sophia Krischer on 23 May 1756 in the Blue Church, Upper Sauccon township (next to Salisbury township). She was forty at the time of their marriage and was 77 when she died on 17 November 1793.
We have no further information concerning Gottfrid except that he is said by a not-too- reliable source to have died in 1768 or 1769. We do know, however, that his son, Adam, served as a Captain in the Revolutionary War and, later, fought in Indian skirmishes. Gottfrid was a religious man and left a legacy of honor to his large posterity which undoubtably numbers in the tens of thousands.
|
1702 - 1768 (~ 65 years)
: Address
: Location
: City/Town
: County/Shire
: State/Province
: Country
: Not Set