52 Ancestors 2025: Oldest Story

 

One of the things I’ve been learning as I dig deeper into my family history is that some ancestral lines trace their American origins back to the early 1600s in New England and New Netherland. Yet these stories were never passed down—those early immigration tales simply faded from family lore. Even many of the migration stories, including trans-Appalachian journeys, just trail off somewhere.

Another thing I’ve discovered is that some earlier genealogical research took fanciful turns. I can’t possibly have that much royal blood in my veins! Message boards often post warnings about early 20th-century genealogists-for-hire who told clients what they wanted to hear, latching onto prominent names here and there. One tree on FamilySearch even went all the way back to Adam and Eve—though my genetic tree places “Eden” firmly in Africa.

But one family line seems to have preserved its stories: my maternal grandmother’s family, the Fasts. They were immigrants from the Rheinpfalz (Palatinate) region in what is now Germany. After arriving in America, they settled in Frederick, Maryland, and later in southwestern Pennsylvania. I’ve written previously about one noteworthy member of the family, Christian Fast, but for the most part, they were ordinary farmers descended from modest villagers. Still, their story managed to survive through the generations.

Maybe the annual family reunions, held in two family centers in Ohio and Missouri, helped keep those stories alive. Or perhaps it was the work of a few dedicated family historians who wrote down what they knew and gathered records. In any case, these stories, dating back to the 1700s, remain part of our family’s living memory.

They also serve as a reminder of the pitfalls of incomplete stories or sloppy research. For years, it was assumed that the “Fast” surname originally was “Faust”—a name loaded with literary and cultural baggage (think: Doctor Faustus, a Faustian bargain). One family historian from the Ohio branch even changed his surname to “Faust” and published a well-known book found in many genealogical libraries: By Way of Rotterdam by Wirt G. Faust.

The story went that Nicklaus Faust (later anglicized to Fast) married Cadarine Danner and emigrated from Zweibrücken to the New World. But since no records could be found in Zweibrücken, despite repeated searches, another cousin, Robert Fast, found a more likely candidate while on a business trip to Germany. He located records for Nicklaus Fast of Göcklingen, who married Catharina Dörner of Ilbesheim. They sailed to America on a ship that also happened to carry a man named Nicklaus Faust—hence, the source of the confusion.

Of special note: one privately published Fast genealogy observed that John Jay Fast, the great-grandson of Nicklaus, married Hannah Robbins Day, described as “of New England stock.” Hannah’s Puritan New England roots open up another fascinating set of stories—fodder for a future set of blog posts.

52 Ancestors 2025: Migration - Huguenot Refugees

 

Since all of my ancestors were European immigrants, migration has been a constant theme in my family history. This post, however, is about my paternal immigrant ancestor, my 7th-great-grandfather, Jacques Cossart.

Jacques was born in 1639 in Leyden (Leiden), which is now part of the Netherlands. At the time, it was part of the Habsburg Netherlands, but he wasn’t Dutch—he was a Huguenot, a French Protestant and a member of the Reformed Church founded by John Calvin.

It’s unclear whether the Leyden Cossarts came from Liège, in the French-speaking Belgian province of Wallonia, or from Picardy, in northeastern France. However, it is certain that they were affected by both the persecution of Huguenots in France and the Eighty Years’ War, during which the Netherlands fought for independence from the Habsburg Empire. In 1648, when Jacques was about eight years old, the Peace of Münster granted Dutch independence, bringing some stability to his family and other Huguenot refugees in Leyden.

At just 17 years old, Jacques married Leah Willemijn (or Willems or Villeman), whose family came from Lorraine and the Netherlands. Their first migration, in 1657, was to Frankenthal, in the Pfalz (Palatinate) region of Germany. However, they stayed for only two years before returning to Leyden. In 1662, they made the journey across the Atlantic Ocean to New Amsterdam, settling among other Huguenot refugees and Dutch settlers. Initially, they lived at the southern tip of Manhattan, near the Dutch fort, but later moved to the Bushwick area of what is now Brooklyn. There, they had four more children, including three sons—Jacques, David, and Anthony—who established the Cossart family lines (including variations such as Cossairt and Cassatt).

Like many of my ancestors, Jacques was a devout member of the Reformed Church, and his migrations reflected his search for religious freedom. Interestingly, Leyden was also home to my Pilgrim ancestors before their migration to Plymouth Colony in 1620. My English, French, Walloon, and German ancestors were shaped by religious and territorial conflicts, from the Eighty Years’ War to the Thirty Years’ War to the Eleven Years’ Tyranny of Charles I. They sought freedom from European wars, kings, and bishops, and their democratic and republican church governments later became models for the American Revolution and U.S. government.