The Knight Family Legacy: One Family’s Story

This story has been written from a genealogical standpoint to provide insight into the Knight family's movement from slavery to owners of the plantation manor. The story has its origin with the Knight family as plantation owners in Georgia in the early 1800s and traces their descendants for more than two centuries through available historical documents. To provide a complete historical account, our journey will take a candid view of the Knight family's legacy from buying and selling slaves to a forbidden love that would transcend all class and racial barriers.

This story will cover the love, life, and descendants of Retired Confederate Lieutenant Colonel John Knight and his union with his mulatto slave, Violet Knight. John Knight's role in the Civil War with the 41st Georgia Infantry Regiment, wounds he sustained at the Battle of Perryville, and his Prisoner of War status at the Battle of Vicksburg will also be examined. In one report filed by then "Major" John Knight, he described in his own words the heat of battle in one of the costliest wars in terms of human life in American history.

>When John Knight left a Nuncupative Will on his deathbed leaving his plantation and estate to Violet Knight and their African American descendants, it would set off a court case of historical proportion. The court testimony will detail the quest by real and alleged creditors to stake their claim on the estate's assets while John and Violet Knight's son, Jacob C. Knight, did everything in his power to ensure his father's deathbed wishes were carried out.

This story will be told through the use of court documents, testimony, and other available historical documents. Slavery, a forbidden love, the Civil War, tragedy, death, an unprecedented court battle for control of the Knight estate by heirs, and "a compromise...."

This story has it all.