Landis, Christopher

Christopher Landis (ca 1710 - 1771) is said to have come from Manheim onRhine, Germany. We don''t know where he first settled in America but itcould well have been that he came to Pennsylvania and then, like so manyother of the time, followed the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania toVirginia''s Shenandoah Valley. There is some evi-dence that he was in oldAugusta County, Virginia and it would seem to be there, on 19 February1762, that his daughter, Mary, became the sec-ond wife of Hans MichaelGoodnight, who had also come from Ger-many, and lived briefly inPhiladelphia''s Germantown, before moving on to Bedford and AugustaCounties. We believe that the Landis and Goodnight families then movedto Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. Christopher Landess died in 1771in Mecklenburg County. The inventory of his estate was returned to theOctober session of the County Court. Among those who bought from theestate sale were: John Landis, the widow Landis, Michael Goodnight, HenryLandis, Christian Goodnight and Eve Landis. These and other court recordsof the estate of Christopher Landis indicate a total of seven children:Mary, John, Henry, Eve, Jacob, Felix and Elizabeth, the latter threebeing called, "orphans of Christopher Landess, dec''d. by the Court ofPleas and Quarter Sessions in 1787. Others have suggested threeadditional children, who seem to have been older: James, born ca 1732;Abraham, born ca 1735; and Manassah, born ca 1742.