John Knight DNA breakthrough

The family of John Knight (1812-1912) grew up with the story that he was the illegitimate son of Emanuel Hungerford [E]. Now, two hundred years later, we have proof.

Who was John Knight?

John Knight was born in County Cork, Ireland, in 1812. He came to Australia in 1828 on the Alexander Henry with Emanuel’s family and grew up and lived nearby, until moving to the Merriwa district. He died a century later in 1912.

In our May 2004 Journal, we published an article about John Knight appearing as witness in a court case for the Hungerfords. Peter Sherlock wrote the editorial for this Journal, which also includes a description of an encounter between indigenous warriors. In our May 2017 Journal, we published another article about John Knight written by his descendant Alan Knight.

Peter’s father Charles Sherlock [E.4.1a.6b.5c.1d] wrote in his editorial:

John Knight/Nite’s story takes us back to another Hungerford origin, the group who arrived in Sydney on the ‘Alexander Henry’ with Emanuel and Catherine Hungerford, the progenitors of our Society. John’s long life was bound up in many ways with the Hungerford’s children, and illuminates several aspects of their life and times. We owe a considerable debt to Alan and Joe Knight, John’s great-great grandsons, for their extensive research which underlies this article. Thank you also to Lesley Abrahams for her footnotes and thoughtful editing, which brought a HAFS focus to Alan and Joe’s work.

A DNA Breakthrough

With some unexpected spare time on this unusual “stay home” Easter weekend, Peter Sherlock [E.4.1a.6b.5c.1d.2e] spent time analysing his father’s AncestryDNA results again. This time he focused his search on the surnames of the Knight descendants and the locations where they had lived.

So far, he has found three matches with three descendants from two of John Knight’s children, and importantly, each of these three people match descendants of four of Emanuel Hungerford’s children by his wife Catherine [L]. This triangulation ensures we’re not picking up coincidental matches that come from what is called endogamy – the cross-marriage between different branches of ancestors.

This is a very exciting breakthrough, not only for Peter Sherlock whose work on the Hungerfords of the Hunter forms the foundation of so much of our research, but especially for the Knight family who have known and carefully presented this missing story of the early Australian Hungerford family – the Knight branch. Welcome Knights – we look forward to learning all about our latest branch of the Hungerford family and meeting you.

What next?

Pauline Tyrrell [E.2.4a.10b.1c.2d=] is completing documentation of this new branch of the Hungerford family and in the next few weeks we’ll complete the DNA analysis with a comparison of a Y-DNA test for one of the Knight males against a Y-DNA test for a Hungerford male. We will then publish the full story here and in one of our upcoming Journals.

Meantime, if you have already had an AncestryDNA test, you can do some detective work of your own using the details in the articles mentioned above. Only some of us are finding fragments like these that confirm the Knight connection, so collaboration is needed and once again, if your oldest family members are willing to do a test, now is the time. Let us know if you need help or find interesting discoveries.

Please encourage your family members of all ages to become a member or subscribe to our email list so we can keep in touch.