Weiser, Conrad.—Along with Franz Daniel Pastorius, Jacob Leisler and John Peter Zenger, the name of Conrad Weiser deserves to be commemorated as one of the outstanding figures of early American history, for no man of his period exercised such influence with the Indians or did so much to promote the peaceful development of the settlements by insuring the friendship of the Six Nations. The following sketch of this famous character in American history is taken from “Eminent Americans” by Benson J.Lossing:

“One of the most noted agents of communication between the white men and the Indians was Conrad Weiser, a native of Germany, who came to America in early life and settled with his father in the present Schoharie County, N.Y., in1713. They left England in 1712 and were seventeen months on the voyage. Young Weiser became a great favorite with the Iroquois Indians in the Schoharie and Mohawk valleys, with whom he spent much of his life. Late in1714 the elder Weiser and about thirty other families who had settled in Schoharie, becoming dissatisfied with attempts to tax them, set out for Tulpehocken in Pennsylvania, by way of the Susquehanna River, and settled there. But young Weiser was enamoured of the free life of the savage. He was naturalized by them and became thoroughly versed in the language of the whole Six Nations, as the Iroquois Confederacy in New York was called. He became confidential interpreter and messenger for the Province of Pennsylvania among the Indians and assisted at many important treaties. The governor of Virginia commissioned him to visit the grand council at Onondago in1737 and with only a Dutchman and three Indians he traversed the trackless forest for 500miles for that purpose. He went on a similar mission from Philadelphia to Shamokin (Sunbury) in1744. At Reading he established an Indian agency and trading post. When the French on the frontier made hostile demonstrations in1755 he was commissioned a colonel of a volunteer regiment from Berks County, and in1758 he attended the great gathering of Indian chiefs in council with white commissioners at Easton. Such was the affection of the Indians for Weiser that for many years after his death they were in the habit of visiting his grave and strewing flowers upon it. Mr.Weiser’s daughter married Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, D.D., the founder of the Luthern Church in America.”

One of his grandsons was General Muhlenberg, another was the first Speaker of the House of Congress. General Washington said of him: “Posterity will not forget his just deserts.”