Johann Conrad Weiser

Life

Johann Conrad Weiser was born in the area of Aspach, Stuttgart, Baden-Wurttemberg, in 1668. He married there to Anna Magdalena Uebele, and had a large family. They emigrated to New York City via camps in Portsmouth, England, in 1710.

"The London Gazette noted, April 7, 1710, that ten ships were ready to sail with Palatines from Portsmouth for New York under convoy. In a report to Robert Harley, then Secretary of State, June 18, 1711, James DuPre, commissary at New York for Hunter and who sailed originally with Hunter, stated that all the Palatines embarked in December, 1709, but did not start until April 10, 1710. The demands for demurrage made by the owners of the vessels also show that the fleet did not finally leave Plymouth, further west along the southern coast of England, until April 10th. The Palatine transports had moved along the coast of England, touching Portsmouth and Plymouth during the early months of 1710 and finally sailed on April 10th. The Palatine accounts of a long voyage may be reconciled to this revision of the date. They were on board ship for six long months and the sufferings of the Palatines were terrible, for misery seems long in duration. Indeed, one of the Palatine ships had to return to port and sailed again later.

Probably because of the low transportation rate, the people were closely packed in the ships. Many of them suffered from the foul odor and vermin; some below deck could neither get fresh air nor see the light of day. Under such conditions the younger children died in great numbers. The last letters before sailing, written at Portsmouth during April, reported eighty deaths in one ship and one hundred sick in another. Good healthy food was not provided and its lack no doubt added to the general unhealthy conditions. Soon the fleet was ravaged by ship-fever. Modern science has traced this malady, now known as typhus and recognized as more deadly than ty- phoid, to such carriers as infected fleas and body lice. Crowded in those foul holds with little or no provision for the most elementary sanitation, the immigrants were decimated by this dread disease. From their misery indeed, the disease took on a rather sad distinction, since it became known to the doctors of that day as the "Palatine fever." A petition made later in New York by one Thomas Benson, a surgeon, for reimbursement for medicine stated that on his ship 330 persons had been sick at one time. How welcome must the call of land in sight have sounded to these early immigrants! The first ship to arrive was the Lyon, which touched New York on June 13, 1710, Governor Hunter's ship and several others following the next day. One, the Herbert, was wrecked on the east end of Long Island on July 7th, and the last did not arrive until August 2nd. A letter from Hunter to Lord Godolphin, the Lord Treasurer, and dated October 24, 1711, stated that of the 2,814 Palatines who had started, 446 had died before the end of July. Thirty little newcomers joined on the way over, restoring a portion of the loss."

Johann Conrad's first wife died right before the journey. He remarried not long after reaching New York.

After some winters in New York, the family moved overland to Berks County, Pennsylvania, where they settled in Womelsdorf.

• https://archive.org/stream/earlyeighteenthc00knit/earlyeighteenthc0...

Descendants of John Conrad Weiser

Generation No. 1

1. JOHN CONRAD1 Weiser was born 1668 in Grossapach, Wruttenburg, Germany, and died July 13, 1746 in Wumseldorf, Berks County, Pennsylvania. He married ANNA MADGALENA UEBELE 1686 in Grossapach, Wruttenburg, Germany. She was born 1666 in Grossapach, Wruttenburg, Germany, and died May 01, 1710 in Grossapach, Wruttenburg, Germany.

Children of JOHN Weiser and ANNA UEBELE are:

1. MARIA CATHERINE2 Weiser, b. 1686, Grossapach, Germany; d. February 25, 1761, Germany.
2. ANNA MARGARET Weiser, b. 1689; d. September 1748, New Jersey.
3. MARIA SABINA Weiser, b. 1694, Germany.
4. JOHN Conrad Weiser, b. November 02, 1696, Germany; d. July 13, 1760, Berks County, Pennsylvania.
5. GEORGE FREDERICK Weiser, b. 1697, Germany; d. 1764, New York.
6. CHRISTOPHER FREDERICK Weiser, b. February 24, 1698/99, Grossapach, Wruttenburg, Germany; d. June 16, 1763, Emmanus, Pennsylvania.
7. ANNA BARBARA Weiser, b. October 17, 1700.
8. JOHN FREDERICK Weiser, b. June 25, 1702, Germany; d. July 02, 1702, Germany.
9. REBECCA Weiser, b. June 06, 1703, Germany; d. July 06, 1704, Germany.
10. JOHN FREDERICK Weiser, b. February 23, 1704/05, Germany; d. November 29, 1707, Germany.
11. ERHARD FREDERICK Weiser, b. June 11, 1706, Germany; d. November 29, 1707, Germany.
12. REBECCA Weiser, b. June 14, 1707, Germany; d. 1709, Germany.
13. JACOB Weiser, b. 1708, Germany.

Not sure this is true

Founder of Weisersdorf near Middleburg, N.Y.

History

On 09.12.1686, Anna Weisser, Conrad’s mother, sold him part of the Weisser property in the Spengelgasse of Grossaspach. He farmed on the family’s land during this time. Just after the French invaded Germany in 1688 at the start of the war of the Palatine Succession (1688 – 1697), Conrad Weisser sold some of his inheritance and bought his way into the Würtemberg military. He became a corporal in the Blue Dragoons, a mounted troop unit (an expensive way to gain prestige). In 1698 he sold part of his property to his brother-in-law George Uebele. In 1700 he again assumed the centuries old family tradition of being a baker. He also had and farmed about 20 morgen of land and several parcels of vineyards. Having spent a good bit of his inheritance to obtain a military career, he had to buy a small day-labourers house from his brother-in-law Hans Michael Brod in 1705.

On the heels of yet another French invasion in 1707, disease spread in the village taking sudden toll of its inhabitants. The winter of 1708/09 was a severe blow for many people, destroying vineyards and orchards, the worst in a century. On 01.05.1709 Anna Magdalena, Conrad’s first wife, died while she was pregnant (the church records say for the fifteenth time). This was too much for Conrad, the former corporal and now impoverished baker, to bear. These tragic circumstances led him to start a new life in a new world. Rumours were making the rounds that the English Queen Anne would provide for Germans who wanted to emigrate to America. And, emigrate they did, Conrad within two months of his wife’s death (24.06.1709). All but the eldest daughter who was married was in the party. They walked to the Neckar River, past Heilbron, Wimpfen and Heidelberg to the Rhine and along it into the Netherlands to Rotterdam. On 27.07.1709 they embarked from the Dutch port, and on 28.07.1709 sailed for London, England. In London with tens of thousands of their countrymen, the Weissers’ waited, the centre of political controversy. The resolution was to require them to pay their passage and sustenance by working in New York at producing pitch for the British navy, after which they would receive forty acres per family. The politicians satisfied, the German signed an agreement in which they promised to go where they were sent and not to leave the province without the Governor’s permission. They were loaded into vessels which sailed only months later and finally arrived in New York. One of the ships, The Lyon, docked on 13.06.1710 with the Weisser family on board.

In New York, the several thousand Palatine immigrants were bound to produce tar from the pitch of Pine trees at camps near the Hudson River about hundred miles north of New York City. The settlers were divided into five villages at first and John Conrad was the Headman of one. He received a seven pound salary as Headman and voiced the complaints of his fellow Germans before the Governor, Robert Hunter, who was caught in an impossible situation: the trees could produce no tar, the overseer of the Palantines (Robert Livingstone) was a scoundrel. The Germans expected better conditions i.e. food aplenty and land of their own. A military campaign in 1711 provided occasion for the climax of the difficulty. One of the captains of the Palantines was John Conrad Weisser, and when the soldiers returned from a futile march into northern New York they discovered their families were starving. Weisser led the Palantines in a confrontation with the Governor. The incident ended when Hunter lost his temper, shouted at the Palatines, and ordered them disarmed. In the following year Hunter released them to go where they pleased.

John Conrad Weisser was one of a number of men deputized by the Germans to seek land at Schoharie, about fifty miles west of Albany. After some time, the Germans were settled there in a collection of little “dorfs” or villages, of which one bore the name Weiserdorf (and is today known as Middleburg). Conditions were poor, but hard work began to make a home of this wilderness. Since the Palatines were squatters before the law (even if they had made a purchase deal with the Indians), it was inevitable that 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 was Adam Vroman who had arrived in 1715. Evidently the two Weissers (John Conrad jnr. having returned to his father’s household after living with the Indians and learning their language) made conditions so miserable for Vroman that he petitioned the Governor Hunter for aid. A warrant was placed in the hands of the Justices of the Peace in Albany and Duchess counties for the senior Weisser’s arrest, but he managed to escape the law. Nearly crushed, the Palatines resolved to send Weisser senior and two others to London to appeal to King George 1, a fellow German. John Conrad seeked in vain to establish the Palatines’ rights. After five years he returned in 1723 to America, only to find his colony was scattered. The remaining years of his life found him in several places -- never settling down -- always following some scheme or other. Later in life, after many years of silence towards his family, John Conrad was discovered in upstate New York.

He married a second time in the Spring of 1711 to Anna Magaretha Mueller. They had three children.
When John Conrad Weisser immigrated to New York in 1710 the name changed to Weiser with a single “s”.

Alternate summary

Born in Germany on 1668 to Jacob Weiser and Anna. John Conrad married Anna Magdalena Ubelen. John Conrad married Anna Magdalena Uebele and had 11 children. John Conrad married Anna Margaret Miller and had 3 children. He passed away on 1746 in Tulpehocken, Pennsylvania, USA.

• http://records.ancestry.com/John_Conrad_Weiser_records.ashx?pid=910...

References

• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/30161742/johann-conrad-weiser
• Reference: Ancestry Genealogy - SmartCopy: Oct 1 2018, 5:25:08 UTC
• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Jan 21 2020, 16:08:48 UTC

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Conrad Weiser came to the US in 1710 with the Palatines and settled in the Hudson Valley. A lot has been written about him, including a novel about his son, John. A fairly good account of Weiser is in the Story of the Palatines by Stanford Cobb.)