Why thank you Andy.
No canoe, my mother's family sure does have an interesting history though.
My Mom is BIG TIME into Genealogy, so she has the story checked out and the documents to prove it.
Seems that three brothers came over from what we would call Austria/Germany today, they were farmers in what is known as the USA, in an area where the immigrants were called "New Pennsylvania Dutch", being that they said they were "Deutsch" and in Pennsylvania... :roll:
When the war for independence broke out between what is now the US and the English King, the three brothers went to Canada to fight against the Yanks and for the English king, because if they did, they would be given big chunks of land
Oh well, can't fault them at that, I guess. When they showed up at the recruiting place, the English officer asked them "Who are you?" the three brothers, not speaking English well at all thought the question was "What are you?" so they said "Loyalists". They went, they fought, and all three survived. When the war was over, and they went to get their land from the English, there was no record of them signing up :shock: it turns out that the English Officer wrote their names down as "Loyst" (as in Loyalist), thus to claim the land, they had to go by the name of "Loyst" and this is how this name was created. Every Loyst is related to my family, as they came from the original three brothers. One brother did not like what would become Canada, so he went back down south, and there is still a family of Loysts in the USA, the other two stayed in Canada, but one, left farming and opened a bar and brothel in a town, after a few years the townsfolk got tired of the trouble the bar/brothel brought along, so they tared and feathered the brother and ran him out of town, and he was not heard from again, so all of my mother's side of the family come from the one brother left in Canada farming, and his decedents still farm the same land today, so no canoe
Most likely more than you wanted to know, hope I did not put you to sleep.
Cheers! :lol: