LOYST, Henry: 1763 - 1836
Tile ordered and paid for by Ab. Loyst, Fredericksburgh, Ontario, January 1889
Henry Loyst was born Johan Heinrich Chehan (Cheban) in 1763 in the area of Bonn, Germany. His parents, Johann Chehan, born in 1725, and Annoka Magdalena Lydecker, born in 1737, had three children before they immigrated to Philadelphia around 1770. Later two sons were born in America. When Johann died, Annoka remarried. Her four older children, now using the family name Loyst, fled to Canada after the American Revolution and she remained in America with her youngest son, retaining the name Chehan.
“Sask,” a Loyst descendant researching her German roots, submitted an interesting story to Ancestry.com explaining the change of name from Cheban to Loyst in the Canadian line:
The name was originally Cheban, but when the four oldest children were asked at the border crossing into Canada who they were, they said, “We are Loyalist.” Because of a speech problem (or maybe a thick accent) it was thought they had said “Loyst” so that became their name. I don’t know if that is true, but it does make a colorful story for the family tree.(1)
A plausible explanation, but the change more likely occurred when Heinrich (Henry) and Andreas (Andrew) joined the 2nd Battalion, King’s Royal Regiment of New York (KRRNY) in October 1781. The enlistment information includes both names Loyst and Chehan.(2) The name Loyst is now clearly written in stone in the family cemetery in South Fredericksburgh, where several generations of Loyst descendants are buried.
Henry Loyst served in the KRRNY for two and a half years from age nineteen. About 1790 he married Annatje Peterson in New York City. Anna, born on November 1, 1773, was the daughter of Loyalists Abraham Peterson and Mary Magdalena Van Ordin. The Peterson family also resettled in Canada after the war and made their home in Prince Edward County. Abraham Peterson left three sheep to his daughter Anna Peterson Loyst in his 1823 will.(3)
After the war, Henry and Andrew and their two sisters, Christina and Margaret, all settled in Fredericksburgh Township on land deeded to them on December 31, 1798. In 1802, Andrew and his wife Elizabeth, who married August 7, 1791 in Fredericksburgh, sold their share of the land to Henry. Andrew’s wife, as the daughter of a Loyalist, had petitioned for land a little further north in Richmond Township, and Andrew petitioned for a second lot close to his wife’s allotment, noting that he had improved the land previously granted to him and his brother.(4) Henry and Anna remained on their farm in Fredericksburgh. They had nine children: William, Eleanor, Elizabeth, Peter, Deborah, Marti, John, Henry and Abraham.
Both Henry and Anna Loyst died in North Fredericksburgh, Henry on August 16, 1836, aged seventy-two years and Anna on June 8, 1845. They are buried in Parks Cemetery, North Fredericksburgh.
1. “Sask” to rootsweb, German-American-L Archives, 12 Apr 2000, www.ancestry.com (accessed May 2011).
2. Ernest A. Cruikshank, King’s Royal Regiment of New York, rev. ed. (Global Heritage Press, 1984).
3. “Will of Abraham Peterson,” Loyst Family File (Lennox & Addington County Museum and Archives, Napanee).
4. Dorinne R. Macnab, UE, ed., Loyalist Lineages of Canada (Toronto: UEL Assoc. of Canada, 1991).