256 HISTORY OF 



seals of six free-holders of the said county, Gabriei 

 Davis, John Caldwell, Joshua Low, Emanuel Carpenter, 

 Walter Denny and Thomas Wilkins, for assessors, and 

 John Davis commissioned for the ensuing year. 



We have introduced a brief notice of one whose name 

 is intimately associated with the history of Lancaster 

 county, and the early history of the United States. 



Conrad Weiser, an active, enterprising man, con- 

 spicuous in the annals of this county from its organiza- 

 tion till 1760, was born in Germany, 1696. At the age 

 of 13, in 1709, he left his Vatcrland, accompanied by 

 his father and seven brothers and sisters, with three or 

 four thousand other Germans, they went to England ;* 

 thence they sailed for New York, where they arrived, 

 the 13th June, 1710. In the fall of the same year, the 

 father of the subject of this notice, and hundreds of 

 German families, were transferred at Queen Anne's 

 expense to Livingston District, where many of them 

 remained till 1713; that year about one hundred and 

 fifty families moved to Schoharie to occu])y lands pre- 

 sented to Queen Anne by a Mohawk chief, for the 

 benefit of these Germans. While residing here, Conrad 

 Weiser 's fothcr, in 1714, became acquainted with Quag- 

 nant, a chief of Maqua or Mohawk nation. Quagnant 

 proposed to the father to take Conrad with him into 

 his country, and to teach him the language spoken by 

 his nation; the father consented, and Conrad accom- 

 panied the chief to his house in the autumn of 1711. — 

 Here his sufferings, according to Weiser's own journal, 

 were almost intolerable. lie was exposed to the in- 

 clemencies of a severe winter, '^pinched by hunp^cr and 

 front,'" menaced with death by the inebriated Indians; 

 tc escape which, he had often to flee and conceal himself 



•See page 182—184. 



