Johann Conrad Weiser Sr.
He served as a corporal in the army of the Holy Roman Empire, and fought in the Nine Years' War of 1688 to 1697 between a coalition of European powers and France.
[1][2] Weiser and his family were German Palatines who fled Germany because of the destruction of crops by invading French armies, and the icy cold winter of 1708—09;[5] Weiser's wife Anna Magdeleana died suddenly of an attack of the gout while pregnant with their fifteenth child on May 1, 1709.
Weiser sold his house, fields, meadows, vineyard, and garden to Conrad and Catrina, for 75 gulden.
[2][4] Queen Anne of Great Britain was sympathetic toward the German Palatines, and allowed them to stay in England.
However, as their numbers grew, the Board of Trade and Plantations prepared a plan to send them to America, where the Crown promised them free land after they worked off their passage by producing naval stores.
They left England December 1709 on the Lyon, one of ten ships carrying about 3,000 people to America, including Weiser and his family.
[1][2] After being held in quarantine to let ship diseases run their course, the surviving refugees were taken up the Hudson River to Livingstone's manor.
[4] Despite being promised free land, the Germans were required to work for several years to pay for their transportation expenses.
His children disapproved of the marriage, and Conrad Jr. wrote, "It was an unhappy match, and was the cause of my brothers and sisters' all becoming scattered.
The Mohawk, part of the Iroquois Confederacy, helped the German Palatines throughout the winter, in which they earned their trust.
Eventually, multiple villages in the area sprang up, more food was grown, and thus life improved and people no longer starved.
[5] In 1715, Hunter sent an agent, Adam Vrooman, to Schoharie, to make deeds for the Palatines, although the Mohawk had granted them the land.
The community sent three men to represent them: Johann Conrad Weiser, Wilhelm Scheff, and Gerhardt Walrath.
The newly commissioned Governor of New York, William Burnet, was ordered to grant land to the Germans.
In 1723 he completed what was called the Burnetsfield Patent, whereby 100 heads of families received about 100 acres (0.40 km2) each on the north and south sides of the Mohawk River west of present-day Little Falls.
[5] In 1723, William Keith, Baronet Governor of Pennsylvania, was in Albany on business [4] when he heard about the suffering of the Germans in New York.
With the help of the Mohawk, Weiser led a group of Germans from Schoharie south to the Susquehanna River; they traveled along Indian paths and by canoe to present-day Tulpehocken in the spring of 1723.
