Mr John Conrad Weiser

• Birth Notes
  • Records of birth were destroyed when Gross Aspach was destroyed by the French.

• Death Notes
  • John Conrad Weiser's death described by Henry Melchior Muhlenberg.
    
    "He was so worn out by his long journey (from New York to Pennsylvania) that he was carriend into my house almost dead.  After he had lain in bed for 24 hours and had taken some nourishment, he came to himself again and began repeating in broken words the hymn: "Schwing dich auf zu deinem Gott, &c..... His eyes were almost dark and his hearing gone, so that I could not converse with him.  But I could not withhold my tears when I heard him repeating over and over the great text relating to the blessed atonement in Chrust, such as:  Himself took our infirmities &c ... to which he added companion texts, such as:  Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden ...
    
    My father-in-law meanwhile sent a wagon with a bed and had him brought fifty miles farther to his home, and when he had given us his blessing, had with great difficulty reached his destination, and had lived for a short pace longer with his Joseph in Goeshen, he fell asleep at last amid the heartfelt prayers and tears of the children and grand-children who stood around him, after having been between eighty and ninety years on his pilgrimage.
    
    

• General Notes
  • Prof. Oscar Kuhns in his "german and Swiss Settlements in Pennsylvania," wrote "Turenne, who had received definite orders from Versailles to devastate the Palatinate, did his work thoroughly. Once more the monotonous tale of misery must be told: Nobleman, citizen, peasant plundered; fields laid waste; cattle carried off; even the clothing torn from the backs of the wretched victims. What could not be carried away was destroyed; even the bells and organs were taken from the churches. At one time, seven cities and nineteen villages were burning; starvation once more threatened the homeless peasant." Macaulay in History Of England III p.112, "The commander announced to near half a million human beings that he granted them three days of grace, and that within that time they must shift for themselves. Soon the roads and fields, which then lay deep in snow, were blackened by innumerable multitudes of men, women and children flying from their homes...Meanwhile, the work of destruction went on. The flames went up from every market place, every parish church, every country seat, within the devoted province. The fields where the corn had been sowed were ploughed up. The orchards were hewn down. No promise of a harvest was left on the fertile plains near what had been Frankenthal. Not a vine, not an almond tree was to be seen on the slopes of the sunny hills aroud what had once been Heidelberg."
    
    Hank Z Jones III writes that "another factor was the severe winter of 1708-09, which was the worst in memory...Carla [Mittelstaedt-Kubaseck, his German researcher] has found several entries in church books regarding the severity of the winter, mentioning the heavy snows, fruit trees and grain frozen, people and cattle freezing, and the rivers and mills frozen, so there was great hunger in the land." He also mentions high taxes and exorbitant rents, but discounts the frequently mentioned religious reasons, "The 1709 group did not appear to be that strict in adhering to their own religions. They were religious, but frequently baptisms of members of Lutheran families were found recorded in Catholic church books. Johannes Heiner, a strong Lutheran leader in New York, is an example. His baptism in GE is recorded in a Catholic church book and his marriage appears in a Reformed church record. There are lists of Palatines, said to be Catholics, who were returned to Holland from London when the emigration became too large. These lists of 'Catholics returned to Holland' have been published in Knittle's book and elsewhere. We have traced some of these families; some were Reformed and some were Lutheran. Others actually were Catholic. Their religion was not the essential point." Of course, many records did not survive. One book survived World War II only to be burned by the pastor to cook his meal!
    
    Mr Jones writes that a "Golden Book" was published that presented a very magical view of America, and was spread often by ministers. Petitions to emigrate often tried to find out who was advising people to leave with "trick questions." "How did you first come upon the idea of leaving Germany?" "Poverty, to improve the way of life, the high price of bread, etc" "Where will you get the means for your journey?" "Sell all my possessions, sell my animals, etc." "Who did you receive advice from?" "No one-- my own decision." He feels the most important factor may well have been the spirit of adventure.
    
    Whether the reason was any of this, or his wife's death, we don't know, but John Conrad sold his property to his already-married eldest daughter and took the surviving eight children to London, from which they embarked several months later. The ships floated around in various English harbors from December 1709 until April 1710, when 3 warships and Robert Hunter, NY governor, joined the group and began the crossing. Conditions were dreadful and many died. Their vessel, the Lyon, landed at New York on June 13, 1710, with nine other vessels full with 800 other families, who had fled down the Rhine valley to Rotterdam, and then across to London to escape the ravages and persecutions of Louis XIV, the Catholic, had let loose on Protestant Germany after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The poor of London had come to resent them deeply, and that's why many of the immigrants were rushed off to New York to serve as a buffer against the French, a Protestant buffer, and as suppliers of naval stores.
    
    There, about 2400 souls of the original 4000 who started the trip made it to quarantine on Governor's Island in Manhattan. About 250 more people died there, and were buried on Governor's Island. The English insisted that older children be indentured to settled residents, so John Conrad's two children George Frederick and Christopher Frederick were bound out by the governor to Long Island. The remaining Palatine immigrants were bound to produce tar from the pitch of pine trees at camps near the Hudson River, about 100 miles north of New York City. Eventually, there came to be the East Camps (really four small villages of Annesbury, Queensbury, Haysbury and Hunterstown, with a joint population of 1189), and the West Camps (614 people in 3 villages). It is doubtful if there are that many people there today, according to Elaine B Liepshutz, in The Palatine Camps of 1710! The settlers were divided into five villages at first, and John Conrad was the head of Queensbury. As such, he voiced the complaints of his fellowmen before Governor Robert Hunter, who was caught in an impossible situation: the trees could produce no tar, the overseer of the Palatines (Robert Livingston) was a scoundrel, and the Germans expected better conditions-- plenty of food (all provisions were issued from Manor warehouses) and land of their own. Even children walked the three miles to the pine forests to work, picking up fallen knots from trees.
    
    This Robert Livingston (1654-1728) and his Dutch wife Alida Schuyler (m.1679 then the 22 year old widow of Nicholas Van Rensselaer, b.Albany, a literate business woman) felt they were too old for all this business of providing for the Palatines, but the opportunity to get settlers for the area was a wonderful piece of luck. On 9/29/1710 the Livingstons sold Gov. Hunter 6000 acres for about the price they had paid the Indians in 1683. Their profit on the deal was the tidy parcel of thousands of acres they had left for themselves. Dr Lawrence Leder, the foremost authority in this area says Livingston " was a successful man of his time." Elaine Liepshutz agrees, calling him ambitious, grasping, hard-working and a good husband and father, coming to AlbanyNY in 1674 with very little money, having spent 11 of his 20 years in Rotterdam. In 1710, their conglomerate business enterprise consisted of a store and home in Albany, a store and a home in New York, and growing complex of farms on their lands on Livingston Manor. The manor house was built before 1694, and added to in 1698. In the spring of 1710, Robert had craftsmen build and launch a small river sloop named "Caledonia." By the time the Palatines arrived, there was a grist mill, a saw mill, a brew house, and a bake house in operation. The warehouses were stocked with trade goods, and they did both a wholesale and retail business. Most of what we knew of Livingston had been written by his political enemies. Governor Fletcher, his political foe, called him "ye vilest man that ever lived-- a great scoundrelle. A man of such vile principales, from sucking any more blood of the Provinces, for he has been a very sponge to it...never disbursing 6 pence but with expectation of 12 pence, his beginning being but a little bookkeeper, yet he has screwed himself into one of the most considerable estates in the Province." Liepshutz says," the financial affairs of 18th century colonial governments make the recent Watergate mess look like child's play. Robert loaned money to the government and expected to be repaid. I suspect he padded his bills by about 25%, knowing the Lords of Trade would be expecting about a 25% donation to process his accounts." The Palatine Livingston Manor (called Loewenstein in John Conrad's German) is not LivingstonManor New Jersey of today. It is the southern third of Columbia County, on the east bank of the Hudson, about 110 miles north of New York City.
    
    A military campaign in 1711 became the climactic point. Our Germans considered the Catholic French their arch-enemies, and Louis XIV the cause of all their troubles. Several hundred joined the Expedition of 1711 in a proposed expedition against Canada. They spent the better part of the summer training about Albany and Lake George instead of farming. Fortunately, this expedition showed the men the vast amount of land available and taught them to use guns, so that survival later in Schoharie and Mohawk Valleys was possible. When the Palatine contingent (one of whose captains was John Conrad) returned from a futile march into northern New York, they discovered their famlies nearly starved. Weiser led the complaint and Hunter lost his temper, shouted at the Palatines, and sent a company of soldiers to disarm them, fearing a revolt. August 1712, political opponents of Hunter gained the upper hand, and he released them to go where they pleased as long as they returned in the spring to work. 9/6/1712 he announced that they would not be provided for in the future. No stores for the winter; would their children starve?
    
    John Conrad was one man deputized by the Germans to seek land at Schoharie, about 50 miles W of Albany. After some time, 150 families packed their meager possessions and settled there in villages, or "dorfs," one of which bore the name Weisersdorf, and is today known as Middleburgh. (It is ironic that the 63 families that decided to stay, finding employment and help where they could, did receive deeds to their lands by the 1740's. An almost feudal system developed with others, on tenant farms on Livingston's and other landed gentry Manors. "Agrarian conflicts" were common until 1840 cure with the ballot box. Most of the ball and shot in the French and Indian War was manufactured an Livingston Iron Furnace in Ancram, NY. Robert was firmly for the Rebellion in 1776, so many Palatines were at first Tory agents, being promised 200 acres of land free, but fought against the British in the end. The four small villages Conrad left behind became GermantownNY. Clues of the Palatines are still everywhere, in street names, churches, and the names of present-day inhabitants.)
    
    Back to our ancestors, since the 150 families were squatters, it was inevitable there would be trouble. When the Governor sent an agent to make deeds for the Palatines, they so mistreated him out of suspicion that the government eventually granted the land to others, one of whom, Adam Vroman, arrived in 1715. Evidently the two Weisers (this John Conrad and his son, John Conrad Jr) made conditions so miserable for Vroman that he petitioned Governor Hunter for aid. A warrant was placed the hands of the justices of the peace in Albany and Dutchess Counties for John Conrad's arrest. The Palatines resolved to send Weiser, William Scheff and Gerhart Walrath to Philadelphia and then to London to appeal to King George I, a fellow German. Attacked and stripped by pirates enroute, the ship had to put into Boston for new supplies. Then the three men contracted so many debts in London that they were thrown into prison. Walrath, homesick afterward, sailed for New York but died before reaching his destination. Scheff returned to New York toward the end of 1721 but died soon, within 6 weeks of his homecoming. John Conrad stayed behind, seeking in vain to establish the Palatine's rights. After five years, Nov 1723, he returned to America, only to find the colony scattered. (--Knittle p.204)
    
    The remaining years of his life found him in several places, never settled down, always following some scheme. He tried to purchase lands on the Delaware, but ran afoul of the Proprietors of Pennsylvania. Late in life, after many years of silence toward his family, John Conrad was discovered in upstate New York, not too far from Livingston Manor, his first home there. Conrad, his son, visited him and when conditions became to dangerous, sent his two sons to bring him to Pennsylvania in May 1746.
    
    Henry Melchior Muhlenberg wrote of John Conrad's last days:
    
    
    
    " He was so worn out by his long journey that he was carried into my house almost dead. After he had lain in bed for 24 hours and had taken some nourishment, he came to himself again and began repeating in broken words the hymn: Schwing dich auf zu deinem Gott...His eyes were almost dark and his hearing gone, so that I could not converse with him. But I could not withhold my tears when I heard him repeating over and over the great texts relating to the blessed attonement in Christ, such as: Himself took our infirmities...to which he added companion texts, such as: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden...
    
    "My father-in-law meanwhile sent a wagon with a bed and had him brought fifty miles farther to his home, and when he had given us his blessing, had with great difficulty reached his destination, and had lived for a short space longer with his Joseph in Goshen, he fell asleep at last amid the heartfelt prayers and tears of the children and grandchildren who stood around him, after having been between eighty and ninety years on his pilgrimage."
    
    
    
    He died May 1746 in Berks CoPA, and there is widespread belief that he is buried at Zion, or Reed's Cemetery, near StouchsburgPA, but there is no reason to doubt that he might have been buried, instead on the Weiser farm, now Weiser Park, at Womelsdorf.
    
    The home of John Conrad Weiser is standing in Gross Aspach, Germany, as of 1960.