The Life of (John) Conrad Weiser, the German Pioneer, Patriot, and Patron of Two RacesJohn Conrad Weiser was among very few colonial settlers to achieve fluency in Native American languages, working for decades as an interpreter and peacemaker between European settlers and native tribes. The services rendered by Conrad Weiser were immensely important to the colonists of North America. He spent time living with the Maqua tribe, learning their customs and culture, and achieving supreme command of their language. When disputes arose, Weiser was called upon - on several occasions, his mediation and diplomacy prevented disagreements from descending into violence. In maturity, he served as Superintendent of the Indian Bureau; an agency which promoted peaceful cooperation between Native Americans and white Europeans. This biography charts Weiser's humble beginnings in Germany, his boyhood emigration to America, and his first communications and residence with the Maqua. His greatest successes as interpreter and promoter of peaceful understanding are related in detail. Strongly revered for decades after his death in 1760, George Washington himself revisited Weiser's gravesite in 1793 to remember his contributions. Weiser remains a pivotal figure in the history of colonial America, and his house in Womelsdorf, Pennsylvania is today a museum dedicated to study of the era. The author of this biography, Clement Zwingli Weiser, was a descendent keen on family research, who lived at the turn of the 20th century. |
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... , remarks in his address , delivered at the dedication of the new wing of Palatinate College , Myerstown , Pa . , December 23 , 1875 , on the Pennsylvania Germans : " Then , too , the says : name and fame of Conrad Weiser , the great ...
... Palatinate of the Rhine , and in the town of Gross - Aspach , a place of some note in the county of Backnang — the pedigree of Conrad Weiser took its first beginning . " In this place , " he tells us , in a fragment of his manuscript ...
... Palatinate ; the Duchy of Wur- temberg ; Gross - Aspach ; the dust of his ancestors that had been gathering and mouldering for several genera- tions ; the cradle - place of his being ; his kindred and neighbors and friends - the like of ...
... Palatinate had been most cruelly visited and devastated by the French , especially in 1683 and 1693. Religious wars bore heav- ily on that once fair region . Spanish aggressions were followed by pestilence and famine . Finally came the ...
... Palatinate forefathers . And yet Conrad , who having been but thirteen years old at the time , did not forget to magnify the kindness of Providence through a record in his private journal of this tenor : " Give thanks to the Lord , for ...