Lynn man, 57, makes connection with lost family roots

LYNN – It took one year, hundreds of e-mails and a passion for genealogy to unite a Lynn resident with a Canadian family he never knew and connect him to his ancestor, one of the founders of Lynn.Wayne Knight was actually born Wayne Deland 57 years ago. He was adopted into the Knight family at the age of 7.After his adoption, he lost touch with his birth family until last spring when his wife, Patti Knight, decided on a whim to search the genealogy of the Deland family.What she uncovered was a web of Delands living in Quebec and Lynn, all descendants from Allen Breed, who was one of the founders of Lynn, when he arrived in Massachusetts from England in 1630.”His family is just stuffed with history,” Patti Knight said in an interview last week with The Daily Item.She eventually connected with Jean Claude Roy, whose great-grandfather moved from Lynn to Quebec almost a century ago and who is as passionate as Patti Knight about genealogy.On Saturday, Roy and a dozen other Deland descendants drove down from Quebec to meet their long-lost family member and see the city their ancestor helped found.They met for the first time outside the Red Roof Inn in Saugus.”It’s nice to see Lynn,” Roy said through broken English, after the entire family had hugged and kissed and chatted in the parking lot of the hotel.Roy’s cousin, Serge Deland, said his French-speaking family made the trip to Massachusetts because they are fascinated to meet an English-speaking branch of the Delands.”It’s really exciting to know that the French family has an English family,” he said.And for Wayne Knight, he said Saturday’s family reunion helps heal some of the emotional tears from his adoption.”Separated from your family, you feel deprived,” he said in between posing for pictures with the whole Deland clan. “But right now I feel whole.”Growing up in Salem, Wayne Knight said he felt unexplained connections to Lynn and some of the Delands he would unknowingly meet on the street. He said he remembers driving by a Deland-owned auto shop on Wyoma Square one afternoon and remarking “That person looks just like my father.””I never lost the bond,” he said. “I always felt it.”Several descendants of Breed who stayed in Lynn also attended the Saturday reunion.Doneeca Thurston, who lives in Lynn with her mother, who is also a Deland, said it’s a bit strange to suddenly realize a stranger is family. But she welcomed the new connections.”Putting all the pieces together is awesome,” she said. “And now I have an excuse to come to Canada.”Wayne Knight said the Delands have opened up their hearts to him, as if he had never been apart from his true family.”It’s just so emotional,” he said. “You feel it in your blood.”Amber Parcher can be reached at [email protected].