He lived many years afterward and gave a thrilling narrative of the defeat and cruel death of Colonel Crawford and his own miraculous escape.
Conrad Weiser and Family Arrive in
America June 13, 1710
During the early days of the eighteenth century many Germans, or “Palatines” as they were called, came to America. Many of them settled near Albany, New York.
Among these Germans were John Conrad Weiser and his son Conrad, who arrived in New York June 13, 1710, and settled on Livingston Manor, in Columbia County, N. Y. Conrad was then a lad of fourteen, being born November 2, 1696, near Wurtemberg, Germany.
The company of which the Weisers were members did not prosper in their new home; many of them starved. So in 1714 the Weisers removed to Schoharie, in the Mohawk Valley.
The removal made matters worse. The family had almost nothing to eat. The friendly Mohawk chief, Quagnant, offered to take Conrad into his wigwam for the winter, and his father consented. The lad learned the Mohawk language, but often wished himself back in his own poor home. “I endured a great deal of cold,” he said, “but by spring my hunger much surpassed the cold.” Conrad did not then foresee how valuable his knowledge of Indian language and customs would become.
Conrad did not long remain at home after his return from the Mohawk camp, but acted as an interpreter between the Dutch traders and the Indians.
The son may have been headstrong and the sire harsh, at any rate the youth left home and built himself a cabin in the neighborhood, earned a good income by selling furs, and spent the greater part of the next fifteen years among the Indians. Evidently, however, he retained a respect for the teachings of his ancestors, for he says: “I married my Anna Eve, and was given in marriage by Rev. John L. Haeger, Reformed clergyman, on 22d of November (1720), in my father’s house at Schoharie.” Weiser, the elder, was at that time in Europe.