The first thing we know for sure about Michael is that he joined an emigration scheme in 1763. A man with the improbable name of Count von Stumpel, who had served with the British Army in driving the Acadians from their homeland in Nova Scotia, was given land there. He found about 400 Germans willing to pay a subscription to settle his land and defend it from the natives, and Michael was one of them. Presumably, they sailed down the Rhine River to Amsterdam past the many beau

In the years following the Seven Years’ War (1754-1763), tens of thousands of Germans left for the New World to improve their worldly lot. It seems that my ancestor, Michael Greissen (or Eisan as he later was called) was one of these. He was among about 400 Germans who subscribed to join a colony being set up by Johann Heinrich Christian von Stumpel,a Hanoverian officer who had helped to clear Nova Scotia of Acadians. As a reward, King George III of England had granted him 20

Michael Eisan was born Michael Greissen Frein in the Palatine region of Germany (Pfalz) sometime around 1730, exactly where or when we do not know.  One thing we do know is that he would have had to take a boat down the Rhine to Amsterdam before setting sail across the ocean to the New World. On the way, he would have passed many castles and vineyards, stopping at custom houses to pay tolls and taxes. In 2014, I visited German and took a trip with my sister Margo on a paddle

The Loyalist is my great-great-great-great-grandfather who came to be known as Michael Eisan, though he had many names over the course of the century in which he lived. Born in about 1730 in the Palatine region of Germany, his name was Michael Greissen Frein. On the passenger list of the ship that took him to South Carolina, and in the record of his land grant there, his name is spelled in various ways, such as Greisen Frier. In South Carolina, he shortened his name and in th