| Rudolph | Ullerich | Catherine | Heinrich | Susanna | Frederick | Ernst |
More Links |
Offsite Links |
Ship
passenger list |
|
Once on a main person's page you will notice a box with their children's names. These family are only accessible in siblings pages or the main parent page.
Johann Adam HeiserThe first definite record we have of the ancestry of the family which settled in what is now Schuylkill County, Pa is in the ship passenger list of the ship Brothers which arrived in Philadelphia on September 16, 1751. Johann Adam Heuser was a passenger as were Peter Heyser, Freiderich Daniel Mueller and John George Obermayer. Peter is of interest because of name similarity. Freiderich has the same surname as the spouse of one of Johann's sons and I have described John Jacob Obermayer's relationship above. Three of the older children of Johann and his wife Anna Maria were baptized at Bern Reformed Church in Bern Twp., Berks Co, Pa colony before 1760. We do not know if Johann was married before he came to Pa or if he met Anna Maria in Pennsylvania however their first child was not born until three years after his arrival. Johann paid taxes in Bern Twp. from 1762 to 1769 and in Brunswick Twp., from 1762 to his death in 1789. He was naturalized in Bern in 1765 and took an oath of allegiance in 1777 in Brunswick. Johann and his family attended Zion "Old Red" Church during his life and many of them for generations after. Johann and Anna Maria had eight sons and two daughters who survived him. His estate settlement records in Orphans Court records show him as a weaver who owned 150 acres of warranted land bounded on one side by the Schuylkill River. In 1808 Anna Maria is shown attending communion with her daughter, Susanna. There is a female over 45 shown living with her son Henry in both the 1800 and the 1810 census. On the other hand, her son Ullerich who purchased the rights of his siblings to his fathers land, sold that land in 1809. This would require that the widows dower be set aside in some manner or more likely that Anna Maria had passed on. We cannot know what life was like in this pioneer time but tax records how that log homes were about twenty foot square and that Indians were prevalent in this area until after the Revolutionary war. Many of the residents evacuated the areas north of the Blue Mountains for periods of trouble during the French and Indian War 1750's & 60's) and Revolutionary War (1776-1783) I will use the spelling, Heiser for the early generations but many spellings were used, including Heuser, Heizer and Hauser. In the third generation most of the branches we will follow switched to Hiser. We will use Hiser after generation three. |
SURNAME Heiser
|
The most probable source of the family Hiser is an area on the east side of Lake Zurick in Switzerland. One translation of the name is: Dweller on, or nearby uncultivated land covered by grass and low bushes. The earliest records I have seen were in a book in the Los Angelos Public Library. It was a family history named Swiss Family Heuser published by Charles U. Heuser with the earliest ancestor being born in 1398 as a serf to the Earl of Rapperswyl. More definite records start in about 1541 after churches were required to keep records. An ancestral chart is included. No direct connection to this family has been found, however, from my conversations with the genealogist in the Zurich library I am virtually certain that our family Hiser originated in this part of Switzerland. In all probability our ancestors migrated into what is now southern Germany over several generations. The conclusion about Swiss background comes from studying church background. The German Reformed Church was founded by Ulrich Zwingli in about 1516 and at about the same time as Martin Luther began his movement. These two leaders met once, to discuss merging their congregations, but couldn't not agree on the form of communion. Consequently the Reformed and Lutheran Churches became two separate streams of Protestant thought. Switzerland remained Reformed and on the whole, German Dukedoms were Lutheran. Our immigrant ancestor was definitely Reformed as were his descendants for several generations. The second line of study involves migration pattern. The economy at that time was based on what could be produced on the land. Families tended to be large and land can only be divided a limited number of times. Early church reform movements such as those advocated by Zwingli were resisted by the "state". Different cantons took different specific actions but the pattern to persecute or harass were similar. By contrast the patterns of warfare in the German duchy tended to create a shortage of males and enticements in the form of land or employment were sometimes offered to attract immigrants. While looking through immigration records for the Baden-Alsace area I often came across Heuser lookalikes, Haeusser, etc. I have two records that show that some of the passengers on the ship Brothers, on which Johann Adam Heuser arrived in Philadelphia in Sept 16,1751, came from that area. Excerpts from the diary of John George Obermayer and a copy of his passport give us details of his journey down the Rhine from Rhinehausen and departure from Rotterdam. The other is a partial list of other passengers which gives their origin. All lived within walking distance of Rhinehausen, the point of departure. I am confidant Johann Adam Heuser also started from this area. Ship passenger list It is my hope that this text will inspire enough interest that someone with the ability to translate German will research the Swiss and German archives sufficiently to better establish the linkage. to Site Map / to Photos / |