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  This
group is related to the Heiden Family through
Fredericka "Rika" Knaack who was the wife of
August Heiden,
the first of our family to emigrate from Germany. As
with several of the surnames in our background,
there have been variable spellings found in
different records in Germany and the U.S. Some
American documents use the name Knaak or Knack or
Kanack but the German
records have it Knaack so that is what we will use
for now.
 The
earliest relative in this line is
Johann
Jochim Friedrick Knaack (1791-1835) who was born
in Serrhan, Germany.
This is less than 10 miles from
Gross Wokern where August was born and raised.
Johann's son,
Christoph, was born in 1805 in
Mamerow, Germany
where he married Sophia Dreier in 1834. Christoph
and Sophia had six
children and their fourth child, Fredericka aka
"Rika", was born
in 1841 in Mamerow.
On February 21, 1868,
Rika married August Heiden in
Klaber, Germany. They
had three children,
Heinrich,
Ernst
and Meta.
In 1873, when the family took a ship from Hamburg port to
New York and eventually settled in Monroe, Michigan. |
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Knaack - Knack - Kanak - Knaak -
In
researching Rika's background, the old German church records most
frequently spell it Knaack. In America, we find the occasional Knaak or
Kanack. Since Knaack appears to be the accepted German spelling, that is
what we will use...for now.
Anna
in her newspaper 
