The Kort (Cort) Line
(I) Tradition says that the founder of the Kort (Cort) family in America was John Yost Kurth, who emigrated in 1758, when he was twenty-one years of age, leaving the German fatherland to avoid conscription for military service and coming to America without the consent of his family, and even secretly. Either on his voyage or shortly before or afterward he met Dr. David Marchand, of Huguenot stock, and with him resided in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, later moving to Washington county, Maryland, where there was quite a settlement of Reformed people as early as 1746, to whom the pioneer Reformed minister, M. Schlatter, ministered soon after his arrival in that year as superintendent of the German Reformed congregations in America.
They married two Kemerer sisters, Margaret being the name of the wife of John Yost Kort, as his son Daniel always spelled the family name. She was born near Hagerstown, Maryland, in 1751. Three brothers and three sisters remained east of the mountains, some of them settling in the Big Cove, Blair county, Pennsylvania, and three sisters married men surnamed Syster, Drexler and Baird. Syster was probably an ancestor of the Hon. Andrew Syster, a graduate of Marshall College, and one of the ablest of Maryland lawyers. ‘
John Yost Kurth (Kort) located at Port Royal, near West Newton, and shortly afterwards moved to a large farm about two miles south of Adamsburg, where he and his wife resided until their deaths. He was commandant of Fort Marchand during the Indian wars, where women and children were sheltered from the savages in times of emergency. On one occasion they fled from homestead through the woods, he holding the children on a horse, his wife following on foot, in spite of a painful bruise from which she was suffering. They reached the fort in safety, their asylum being located on the Rumbaugh farm south of Grapeville, several miles from the Kort homestead. John Yost Kort died November 22, 1827, his wife’s death occurring the following year, both resting in the Brush Creek Church Cemetery. He was noted throughout the neighborhood for his piety and integrity, and according to church records at Ferndorf had attained his ninetieth year, although if tombstone dates are correct he was but eighty-seven years of age.
From extracts from the Congregational Records of the Evangelical Congregation of Ferndorf, District Synod of Siegen, Province of Westphalia, in Prussia, supplemented by a letter from Frederick Loos, a descendant of a sister of John Yost Kurth, the following information of the German generations of the Cort family is gleaned: To John Kurth and Elizabeth, his wife, of Biedenbach, was born a son—John Frederick—June 9, 1701. This son, John Frederick, son of John Kurth, of Lohe, was married in the church at Ferndorf, October 10, 1726, to Marie Gertrude, daughter of John Seltzer, church elder. To this couple the following children were born: Catherine, born in Fellinghausen, July 1, 1727; Anna Maria, February 13, 1729; Hans Henry, November 7, 1731; Maria Agnes, October 29, 1735; John Yost, November 16, 1737, of previous mention, his sponsor was John Yost Hofer, assistant judge of both parishes, Ferndorf and Crombach, his day of baptism, November 24, 1737; Anna Juliana, born April 6, 1742; Maria Catherine, born January 6, 1746. Marie Gertrude, wife of John Frederick Kurth, died in Inkernhess, April 26, 1752, aged fifty-seven years and three weeks. Juliana, daughter of John Frederick Kurth, died in Inkernhess, April 30, 1755, aged thirteen years and three weeks. This concludes all mention of the name of John Frederick Kurth in the church records.
Children of John Yost and Margaret (Kemerer) Kort:
1. Frederick, married a Miss Gunkel or Kunkle, and moved to Beaver county, Pennsylvania, where he died in 1850, aged eighty-two years, leaving two sons and four daughters.
2. Susanna, married Michael Kunkle, and had a large family residing in different sections of the West.
3. Catherine, married John Baughman, and had many descendants in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania.
4. Hanna, married John Knappenberger, and had may descendants in Westmoreland county, several of them occupying positions of trust and honor.
5. Elizabeth, married Leonard Croninger, their descendants living in the West.
6. Joseph, married a cousin, Miss Gross, and had five sons and four daughters.
7. Daniel, of whom further.
(II) Daniel Kort, son of John Yost and Margaret (Kemerer) Kort, was born at Port Royal, near West Newton, Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, March 5, 1780, died at West Newton, May 1, 1859. After his marriage he resided with his wife on a part of the old homestead until October, 1854, when he moved to West Newton and there died. He married Elizabeth Turney or Dorney, as it was more correctly spelled, October 4, 1803, born in Upper Hanover township, Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, April 15, 1786, daughter of Daniel and Margaret (Miller) Dorney. Her father was born in eastern Pennsylvania, in 1750, her mother in 1759. They moved to Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, and located near Hannastown, two miles northeast of Greensburg, when their daughter Elizabeth was an infant of a few weeks. He died in 1802, she in 1829, in Kittanning. The Turneys or Dorneys emigrated from Holland to eastern Pennsylvania at an early date and were doubtless of French or Huguenot stock. Daniel Dorney had four brothers, three of whom moved to Ohio, Tennessee and North Carolina at about the same time, one of their descendants being chief justice of Tennessee in 1882, many of the descendants residing in North Carolina. Daniel and Elizabeth (Dorney) Kort are buried in the cemetery on the bank of the Youghiogheny river. Their children: 1. Margaret, born July 24, 1804, married, August 5, 1824, Jacob Baughman, and had thirteen children, one of whom, William, moved to Cass county, Iowa, and was elected a member of the state legislature. Another son, Henry, a soldier in the Union army in the Civil War, was wounded at the battle of Fair Oaks, dying from the efiects, April 18, 1868. 2. Joseph, born November 3, 1805; married (first) September 4, 1828, Mary Skelly, bom June 7, I809, daughter of William Skelly, a soldier of the War of 1812. William Skelly married Elizabeth, daughter of Jacob and Elizabeth (Harmon) Byerly ; he was a soldier at Fort Pitt during the Revolutionary War. Joseph Cort (as the name will hereafter be spelled) married (second) May 12, 1844, Fanny Rhodes; by his first marriage he was the father of six children, by his second, eight children. 3. Hannah, born July 25, 1807; married (first) George Byerly, (second) Samuel Zimmerman; there were seven children of her first marriage, eight of her second. 4. Jacob, born September 2, 1809, died October 13, 1855; married, June 22, 1834, Jane Mary Carson; he was a prominent Democrat, for two terms a member of the Pennsylvania legislature. 5. Simon, born November 8, 1811, died in California in March, 1907; married, December 25, 1834, Sophia Hardin; he was one of the founders of the Presbyterian Church in the Rocky Mountains, was the first elder of the first congregation in Denver, Colorado, assisted in the organization of the first Presbytery and the Synod, being a number of times delegate to the general assembly; one of his daughters, Mary Lavina, was a missionary helper and teacher in the Presbyterian Mission School at Petchburi, Siam, for seventeen years, and was the authoress of several valuable books on that county. 6. Daniel, born November 1, 1813; married, May 28, 1835, Sarah Buchman, who died in January, 1894; he was a member of the Iowa state legislature, founder of the town of Zwingle, Dubuque county, in that state, and father of the Reformed Church of Zwingle. 7. Eliza, born December 5, 1815; married, May 24, 1838, John W. Marshall, and had seven children. 8. Lavina, born October 28, 1817, died in October, 1857; married, in 1840, James Marsh; they had four children. 9. Catherine, born February 13, 1820, died May 23, 1887; married, in March, 1842, Lewis Kline, who died August 15, 1892; their children were nine in number. 10. Albert, born April 15, 1822, died at Zwingle, Dubuque county, Iowa, December 18, 1898; married Maria Eisamen, born September 19, 1829, died June 23, 1907; of their ten children the first three were born in Pennsylvania, the remainder in Iowa. I1. Lucian, born April 18, 1824, died in 1908; was a minister; married, November 12, 1852. Sarah G. McCleary. 12. John, born March 5, 1826, met an accidental death, September 27, 1851, unmarried. 13. Lucetta, born October 26, 1828; married George Plummer. 14. Amanda, born June 15. 1832; married, October 11, 1853, James F. McQuaid (see McQuaid I).
