Family Reunion: Slight
Going four generations back to find another line
This surname can be found among my wife’s Sixteen great-great-grandparents. We have to go that far back to find the first Slight -
Ida Slight (1863 - 1949) was born in Ackley, Iowa, and married a Dutch immigrant named Bernard Blom on 21 Nov 1885. You may recall reading about Bernard’s family in an earlier post if you need a refresher:
Ida Slight’s story begins with her grandfather, Jan Harms Sligt, who was born about 1798, in what was then known as the County of East Frisia (or “Ostfriesland”) within the Kingdom of Prussia. We know from their children’s records that Jan married Antje Martens, and we can guess they were married about 1823. They had three children: Hilke (b. 18 Sep 1824), Marten (b. 17 Jan 1828), and Johann (b. 28 Nov 1834).
The political climate at that time was turbulent. The records we have say the Sligt family lived in the village of Tergast, which is located a few miles east of the city of Emden. Emden had been annexed by Prussia in 1744, some 54 years before Jan was born. It was then captured by French forces in 1757, during the Seven Years’ War, and by Anglo-German forces in 1758. In 1807, when Jan was about 9 years old, East Frisia was added to the Kingdom of Holland, which had been created by Napoleon Bonaparte a year before to control the Netherlands. After Napoleon’s downfall in 1815, East Frisia was transferred to the Kingdom of Hanover, which was officially ruled by George III, the king of England.
I suspect that there might be more records to find - from Prussia or the short-lived Kingdom of Holland - but the records I do have appear to have come from Lutheran church records in the Kingdom of Hanover. From Jan’s death record, we know that he was a carpenter (“Zimmerkunsst”) who died on 5 November 1834, just a few weeks before the birth of his youngest son, Johann.
(If you can read old German script, please feel free to flex your superior skills and drop a translation of this record in the comments.
The first contributor to do so wins a free subscription to this newsletter and the title to the Kingdom of Holland1!)
Jan’s death left his widow, Antje, to raise ten-year-old Hilke, six-year-old Marten, and infant Johann on her own. This probably meant that they relied on the support of their church, which would most likely have been the General Diocese of Aurich, part of the state church, the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Hanover.
On 11 May 1851, Hilke married Christian Berends Freese (1816–1890), becoming his second wife and stepmother to his two daughters. Christ’s first wife was Hilke Emmen Garrelts, who died in 1848. They lived in Needermoor, a few miles southeast of Tergast.
On 24 May 1854, Antje, Marten, and Johann Sligt arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, aboard a bark (a sailing ship) called the Blücher. Hilke and her family appear to have come over the same year, though I have not found immigration records to confirm that, yet. After living in Illinois for several years, they all settled in Iowa during the 1860s - some in Grundy County, and some in Hardin County.
With a slight change in spelling,2 “Johann Sligt” became “John Slight” - and he married another recent immigrant from the former East Frisia. Frauke Margrette Swidden (or Sweeden) and John Slight were married in Ogle County, Illinois, on 23 March 1856. They lived in Grand Detour in 1860, and their daughter, Anna, was born in Illinois on 28 March 1862. They moved to Iowa soon after that, as their second daughter, Ida, was born in Ackley, Hardin County, Iowa, on 24 July 1863. Their youngest daughter was born in Hardin County on 22 Jun 1866, and they named her Hilke.
All three of John and Margrette’s daughters were named in honor of a relative: Anna was named for John’s mother, “Antje,” which was probably pronounced like “Anya” to our American ears. “Ida” was named after Margrette’s mother, who was born “Itje” and began spelling it “Ida” when she immigrated to America. Obviously, “Hilke” was named for John’s sister.
Ida Slight had no brothers, but she did have five male cousins, the sons of her uncle Marten. So if your family traces back to the Slights who lived in Grundy and Hardin Counties in Iowa, Ida’s descendants might just be your cousins.
If you would like to learn more about what the trip over might have been like for the Sligt family, check out Rainey Mitchell’s piece describing another German immigrant’s journey from Emden in 1848:
There is no longer a Kingdom of Holland, and I have no actual authority to grant you any titles. Apologies for the deception.
Pun intended.
Thank you so much for mentioning my article. It is such an honor.