Clymer Weir Cox Genealogy » John Alexander Weir (1752-1840)
Persoonlijke gegevens John Alexander Weir
- Hij is geboren in het jaar 1752 in Warrington Township, Bucks County.
- Alternatief: Hij is geboren in het jaar 1753 in Warrington Township, Bucks County.
- Eigendommen:
- Woonachtig:
- rond 1800: Built Fields Of Praize 113 Breezy Hollow Drive.
- in het jaar 1800: New Britain, Bucks, Pennsylvania.
- Hij is overleden in het jaar 1840 in Field of Praise, hij was toen 88 jaar oud.
- Alternatief: Hij is overleden op 24 april 1840 in Warrington Township, Bucks County "Fields of Praise" Farm, hij was toen 88 jaar oud.
- Hij is begraven in het jaar 1840 in Cemetery of Neshaminiy Presbyterian Church, Warwick Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
- Een kind van SAMUEL (PA 1734) WEIR en Mary Alexander
- Deze gegevens zijn voor het laatst bijgewerkt op 9 augustus 2023.
Gezin van John Alexander Weir
Hij is getrouwd met Mary McKinstry.
Zij zijn getrouwd rond 1784.
Kind(eren):
- James McKinstry Weir 1785-1854
- Priscilla McKinstry Weir 1791-1868
- Mary McKinstry Weir 1799-????
- Nathan McKinstry Weir 1803-1860
- Margaret McKinstry Weir 1805-1874
Notities over John Alexander Weir
Birth:1752 Death:Apr. 24, 1840
Family links:
Spouse:
Mary McKinstry Weir (1763 - 1851)
Inscription:
age 88 years
Burial:
Neshaminy Cemetery
Hartsville
Bucks County
Pennsylvania, USA
Created by: Anonymous
Record added: Nov 08, 2009
Find A Grave Memorial# 44071445
Subject:
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 13:03:35 -0500
From: (XXXXX@XXXX.XXX)
To: (XXXXX@XXXX.XXX)
Donna,
Itâs been a while but I am the current owner of John and mary Weirs Bucks County farmhouse. I trust all is well. My question is Å who currently owns Weirs corner?
Charlie Dinan
Donna Null Basinger
http://donnagene53.tripod.com/
-----Original Message-----
From: Charlie Dinan [mailto:(XXXXX@XXXX.XXX)]
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 9:57 AM
To: Donna Basinger
Subject: Re: Weir Home
Mailing address:
Charles Dinan
113 Breezy Hollow Drive
Warrington, PA 18976
This is our primary residence. My wife (Kerri) and I and our four young sons. Kerri asked me to look at a building lot in the Whisper Ridge Development (This is the recent development built on the farms land. The good news is they built 20 homes on 30 acres. Normally they build a lot more on much smaller individual home lots) While looking at the building lot I spotted the farm house and barn. It had been completely abandoned for three years and very overgrown by vegetation. Like you, after walking through the home (I entered through an unlocked window), I fell in love with the home and barn. My wife thought I was crazy and never dreamed that I would actually buy the home. Boy was she wrong. I bought it and started on a one year restoration / addition. It has come out beautifully and we salvaged all of the homes original character (including a new cedar shake roof). I'll e-mail some digital pictures soon. Again, thanks for the time and color copies of any photos that you have would be very welcome.
Thanks,
Charlie
WEIRS IN WARRINGTON TOWNSHIP, BUCKS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
Not far from Bath, the overflow (from Bucks County) Scotch-Irish Settlement at the Forks of the Delaware in Pennsylvania (Northampton County), a spiritual awakening rumbled. Students from the Rev. William Tennent's "Log College" on the Banks of the Neshaminy in Bucks County, as it was derisively called, traveled as far north as Londonderry, New Hampshire and preached in the meetinghouse to all who would attend.
The name of Weir began to show up in the Scotch Irish community along the Neshaminy Creek in Bucks County along with the names of other Scotch-Irish families from Londonderry, New Hampshire and elsewhere. There were Craigs, Walkers, Grays, Creightons, Barclays, and McKinstrys by 1740. The Carrell family lived on the farm adjoining the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church. The Log College was a mile down the road across from the Tennent home. By 1740 Robert Weir (who may have been a son of Robert and Martha of Nutfield) fell in love with and married Rebecca Carrell. By 1740 John Weir and James Weir owned land about 10 miles from the church and a William Weir owned land in Springfield Township, Bucks County. By the late 1750's Samuel Weir lived on John Weir's tract and Robert and Rebecca Carrel Weir had moved to Augusta County, Virginia (now Rockbridge County) where many of the same names in Londonderry, New Hampshire and Bucks County appeared.
Thanks to the research of Evelyn Eisenhard, I do have DOCUMENTATION for the family of Samuel Weir and his descendants. According to JoAnn Wear Spore, Samuel was the son of John Weir. I have read Samuel's will, walked through the restored homes of Samuel Weir and his son John, and visited the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church and site of the famous "log college" at Neshaminy. By reading about the ministers who served the congregation at Neshaminy in the 1700's, about the Log College (which served as a model for the more formal college its students helped establish at Princeton), and about the Great Awakening......I have learned a great deal about the religious and historical context of the lives of ancestors.
Ten years before the names of John and James Weir appear on the records, central Bucks County was little more than a wilderness with no roads. Each year more and more Scotch-Irish "dissenters" were among the refugees attracted to William Penn's Colony and the ones who, after landing at Philadelphia (the largest port in the colonies), made their way up the Delaware River to the mouth of the Neshaminy. Then they headed north using the Neshaminy Creek as their highway and finally built primitive homes on its banks. By the time John and James arrived in Pennsylvania (from New England or Ireland), the Scotch-Irish in the area had formally established two townships, called a minister, and erected a building for their Presbyterian Church.
SAMUEL WEIR (d.1811) AND MARY
Samuel Weir grew up attending church in an "elegant stone building 40 feet by 30 fitted for galleries and the front hewn of stone." But more important than the facility was the extraordinary preaching the Weirs heard every Sunday and the remarkable company in which they found themselves. The Rev. William Tennent (1673-1746) was an aging Scotsman who had graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1695 and served as "domestic chaplain" to Lady Anne, Duchess of Hamilton as an Anglican minister. In Ireland he adopted he Presbyterian Faith and married the daughter of a dissenting minister, Catherine Kennedy. He served a few other churches in the colonies before moving his wife, four sons and a daughter to the Pennsylvania wilderness.
From the time he arrived in America in 1718, the Rev. William Tennent schooled his four sons in classics and theology. He was "convinced that a well-educated ministry was vital to a developing nation" and dismayed that William and Mary, Harvard, and Yale were at too great a distance for many seeking to train for the ministry. With the assistance of his sons and neighbors he built a large building from logs in the surrounding forest. A small group of dedicated young men moved into the crude attic above the only classroom and cooked many meals in the open fireplace. Some of the students boarded in the Tennent home with the youngest Tennent sons. They arose for prayers at 5 A.M. and studied many subjects including Latin, Greek, and Hebrew until 9 P.M. when they went to bed. The students were impressed with Mr. Tennent's skill in the ancient languages but they were even more impressed with his own character and love for Jesus Christ. A writer in the May issue of the (Presbyterian) Assembly's Magazine, for the year 1805, says of Mr. Tennent:
"He was eminent as a classical scholar. His attainments in science are not so well known, but there is reason to believe that they were not so great as his skill in language. To William Tennent, above all others is owing the prosperity and enlargement of the Presbyterian Church. Tennent had the rare gift of attracting to him youth of worth and genius, imbuing them with his healthful spirit, and sending them forth, sound in the faith, blameless in life, burning with zeal, and unsurpassed as instructive and successful preachers."
His students went on to establish over 60 educational institutions in the colonies! It is said that people stood in deep snow for hours, transfixed by the Rev. William Tennent's eloquent and life changing sermons.
"In addition to his sons, Tennent educated Samuel Blair, John Blair, Samuel Finley, William Robinson, John Rowland, Charles Beatty, Charles McKnight, and others. We find these men preaching from Massachusetts to the Carolinas, now warning the 'secure' of a sophisticated congregation in Boston, or New York, now bringing their message to a handful of settlers on the upper Susquehanna....or in far off Rockbridge County in the valley of Virginia."
When Samuel was a teenager the "Great Awakening" spread through the land "producing a freshening of interest in things spiritual, and underscoring the need for a personal experience of salvation." The young men of the "log college", Samuel's minister, and the sons of his minister were considered leaders in the Great Awakening. They were on the "New Side" in the ensuing divisions that occurred in every church and denomination between those who welcomed the revival and those who disagreed with the emphasis on experience. The "Old Side" was wary of the many excesses surrounding the revival meetings. Perhaps these same tensions contributed to the division in the Presbyterian churches in Londonderry, New Hampshire!
"Most of the recent Scotch Irish immigrants, the "Old Side," favored a tightly organized church with traditional educational standards for ministers and great emphasis on the Westminster Confession. Presbyterians from New England and the Tennent group, the "New Side," did not turn away from these traditional Presbyterian emphases, but they did want to promote revival and vital piety even if it meant relaxing traditional standards."
In 1739 William Tennent rode his horse into Philadelphia to invite the magnetic 24 year-old Anglican preacher and evangelist, George Whitefield, to come to Neshaminy. The church's name appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette insuring that EVERYONE in the area came. Over 3,000 people turned up in Mr. Tennent's meetinghouse yard to hear the sermon.
"When word was brought that the popular evangelist was preaching in the vicinity, farmers dropped their implements in the fields, and rode their horses to a lather to hear him. So great was the range of his voice that Benjamin Franklin decided to measure it, and concluded that 30,000 people could hear him speak from an outdoor stage."
It is likely that the Weirs were among the 3,000 that November day in 1739!
From the journal of the Rev. George Whitefield
Thursday, November 22
Set out for Neshamini (20 miles distant from Trent Town) where old Mr. Tennent lives and keeps an Academy where I was to preach to Day, according to Appointment. About Twelve we came thither, and found above 3,000 People gather'd together in the Meeting-House Yard; and Mr. William Tennent...preaching to them, because we had stayed beyond the Time appointed. When I came up, he soon stopp'd and sung a Psalm, and then I began to speak as the Lord gave me Utterance. At first the People seemed unaffected, but in the midst of my Discourse, the Power of the Lord Jesus came upon me... The Hearers began to be melted down immediately, and very much...After our Exercises were over, we went to old Mr. Tennent's, who entertain'd us like one of the ancient Patriarchs. His wife to me seemed like Elizabeth, and he like Zacchary...we had sweet Communion with each other, and spent the Evening in concerting what Mesure had best be taken for promoting our dear Lord's Kingdom. It happens very providentially, that Mr. Tennent...intends breeding up gracious Youths...The place wherein the Young men study now is in contempt called the College. It is a log-house, about twenty feet long, and near as many broad and to me it seemed to resemble the Schools of the Old Prophets...All that can be said of most of our publick University is, they are all glorious WITHOUT. From this despised place seven or eight worthy Ministers of Jesus have lately been sent forth; more are almost ready to be sent, and a Foundation is now laying for Instruction of many others....
It is surprising how such Bodies of People so scattered abroad can be gathered at so short a Warning. I believe
at Neshamini there might be near a thousand horses, which the people do not sit on to hear the Sermon as in England, but tied them to the Hedges; and thereby much Disorder is prevented.
The Rev. George Whitefield, wrote to a friend in Philadelphia, July 15th, 1740:
"I rejoice you have been at Nashaminy. I can say of Mr. Tennent and his brethren as David did of Goliath's sword: 'None like them.' "
He returned to the church yard in April of 1740 and August of 1754 and the crowds were even larger! Again, it is safe to say that our Weir relatives living in the area at the time returned both times to hear Mr. Whitefield. (See Notes for John Weir Sr. for a sermon of Whitefield's)
Meanwhile, William Tennent retired in 1742 and died in 1746. In 1743 the Rev. Gilbert Tennent returned to his father's church to preach the ordination sermon for Charles Clinton Beatty, an alumni of the Log College. Mr. Beatty was the minister through the French and Indian War until he died of Yellow Fever on a trip to Barbados in 1772. He will always be remembered for his mission trips to the frontier settlements and Indian villages west of Pittsburgh, for his successful fundraising trips to England, and for uniting the New Side and Old Side parties of the church in 1758. Beatty (as Chaplain) accompanied Benjamin Franklin and five hundred men who traveled to western Pennsylvania to defend the frontier, after the burning of the Moravian missionaries at Gnadenhuetten, near Lehighton. In 1754 Samuel Weir became a Trustee of the church while the Rev. Beatty was the pastor.
Samuel and his family traveled about 10 miles each Sunday to church. Just as was noted in Londonderry, New Hampshire the parishioners often walked eight or ten miles with their shoes and stockings in their hands. When they reached a spring near the meetinghouse they washed their feet put on their shoes before entering the sanctuary. The sermons frequently lasted two hours. There was no Sunday School or Nursery. Music was an important part of the service but very different than our choirs of today. Neshaminy did not have a choir during Samuel's lifetime although instruments were used occasionally by Nathaniel Irwin. One or two men sat in the front of the pulpit facing the congregation and stood up to "set the tunes" for the congregation. Only after the Revolution was anything used besides Rouse's version of the Psalms of David. Nathaniel Irwin slowly and cautiously introduced Watts' hymns. Samuel was probably at church the day that one worshipper was so upset that he picked up his hat and walked out before the service was over. He stormed up the hill to the tavern in Warrington:
"When questioned by the men at the bar about his early departure, he fumed that they were doing nothing but singing Yankee Doodle songs and play house tunes, down at Neshaminy. He then ordered a "gill o'rum" to quench his disgust"
In 1774 a call was given to the Rev. Nathaniel Irwin, the person who wrote Samuel's will and was named a "friend" of Samuel Weir. Nathaniel was about eight or nine years younger than Samuel and was the muscular son of spinning wheel maker from Chester County. While at Princeton Nathaniel and James Madison founded the Whig Society. He was a very popular minister and the congregation grew rapidly. He played the violin with some skill and loved to organize social gatherings for the young people of the church at his home. He even entertained them with music and dancing. People admired the vegetables he grew at his large farm off Easton Road and most of all the 'chaise' that transported him around the area. He was the first one to own such a vehicle.
The Rev. Irwin was single when he was called to the church but married Martha Jamison in 1777. She was the daughter of the innkeeper whose nearby inn was a meeting place for Bucks County Revolutionary committees. Sadly, Nathaniel's son became an alcoholic and his wife an adulterer. When she died in 1806 he married again to a "discreet and sensible helpmeet." To supplement his income he prescribed medicines and wrote wills. He wrote the will for Samuel, Ann Weir (daughter of James), and probably many others in our family.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Besides the marriage celebration of Nathaniel Irwin to Martha Jamison that our Weirs may have attended in 1777, the BIGGEST news of the year concerned Washington's 11,000 troops who camped around the church! They crossed the Delaware River at New Hope and marched down York Road right by the tavern owned by Martha Jamison's father! They marched toward Philadelphia but returned a few days later to set up camp at the Crossroads. Samuel's sons John and James served in the Revolutionary war in 1776,1777, and 1778 but it is not clear where they were in 1777. Adam Kerr owned the tavern at the Crossroads and was delighted with his booming business. The church was used to shelter the sick and wounded and some were buried in the cemetery in unmarked graves. The tent city was half the size of Philadelphia and we can assume that our relatives sold or contributed food from their gardens and meat from their supplies for the hungry soldiers that very hot and humid August. It has been said that there were no Tories or Pacifists among the Scotch-Irish. However, the Tent City in their backyard most likely strained the residents' enthusiasm a bit!
Late though it was when the troops arrived at the Crossroads that Sunday evening one of the first orders issued according to Gen. Muhlenberg's Orderly Book was:
"As it is uncertain how long we shall remain in the Present Encampment the Soldiers are to fix Booths before their Tents to shelter them from the Heat. The Qr. Masters are to give directions Immediately to have Vaults [latrines] dug in proper and Convenient Places...." These "vaults" were to be camouflaged with "Bows and Bushes" in a single line to the rear of the camp. The men were reminded that at their previous encampment there had been complaints that the "Offensive smells" had become a "public nusence."
General Washington established his headquarters at the Moland house (John Moland was recently deceased), overlooking the Neshaminy Creek. Betsy Ross' flag was flown there for the first time, Count Pulaski was introduced to General Washington, and Lafayette assumed his command during those 11 days in August. At the end of the 11 days Washington called a Council of War in the reception room of the Moland house. Present at the council, in addition to the Commander-in-Chief, were Major Generals Greene, Stirling, Stephen, and Lafayette; and Brigadier Generals Maxwell, Knox, Wayne, Muhlenberg, Weedon, Woodford, Scott, and Conway. Lafayette, only nineteen years of age, was welcomed into the group for the first time.
In Davis' HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY he describes the Moland farm house. The description will give us an idea how the homes of Samuel and John compared with others in 1777:
"substantial stone dwelling...in good preservation.....
As when Washington occupied it, the first floor of the main building is divided into two rooms with the entry near the kitchen; the larger room being on the south (west) side and entered from the porch, the smaller, back. The latter is thought to have been used by Washington as an office, the larger a reception room. In each there was an open fireplace and then as now a door opened into the kitchen. There has been no change in the porches in sixty years, and similar ones may have been there 1777-8."
Others called it the "best finished house in the neighborhood" at the time of the Revolution. Most structures were built of logs and still consisted of one room downstairs and a loft above. As someone has exclaimed, "John Moland's stone house must have seemed palatial."
JOHN WEIR (d. 1840) AND MARY MCKINSTRY
When the war was over our Weir relatives suffered with everyone else from the depreciation of the paper money issued by Congress. Available land was scarce in Bucks County and neighbors and family members continued to move south by way of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and west to Indiana and Ohio. Samuel's son John married Mary McKinstry and Samuel's daughter Mary married Robert McKinstry, brother to Mary. John inherited land and built his home (Field of Praise) at the end of a long lane off of Upper State Road. Weirs' Corner is located at the intersection of Upper State Road and the Limekiln Pike. A Historical Marker marked Weirs' Corner in the late 1970's but has been removed.
In 1793 John was the collector of pew rents at Neshaminy Presbyterian Church and in October his younger sister Rebecca married John Roberts Simpson at the church. John and Rebecca had four children, all baptized at Neshaminy Presbyterian Church by the Reverend Nathaniel Irwin. Hannah Weir Simpson was born in Whitemarsh, Montgomery County on November 23, 1798 and baptized in February by the Rev. Nathaniel Irwin. Before Hannah turned five her mother, Rebecca Weir Simpson died. Although a marker has not been found, it is likely that she was buried at Neshaminy Presbyterian church with the sermon given by the Rev. Nathaniel Irwin. John Simpson then married Sarah Hare, a granddaughter of Benjamin Hare. The four Simpson children as well as the children of John Weir and Mary McKinstry attended the County Line schoolhouse when a teacher was available. The schoolhouse was just opposite the Simpson Homestead although in another county. Every Sunday afternoon visiting ministers held services at the schoolhouse and Hannah attended these meetings with her family and possibly grandparents and relatives.
When Hannah was a teenager her father took her on a trip in a wagon across the Allegheny Mountains to look at property in Ohio. Joseph Gilkeyson of Roxborough went along to help with the horses and other chores. When they stopped at Inns and Public Houses along the way, John Simpson had a problem he never anticipated. His daughter was too attractive and the young men who saw her asked John Simpson unending questions about his daughter. Annoyed with the excess attention that his daughter received, he told everyone that John Gilkeyson was her husband. That apparently solved the problem. In 1817 John's oldest daughter and husband moved to Bethel, Clermont County, Ohio. In the spring of 1819 John Simpson moved his family to Ohio. Many other families from the area had already settled in Cermont County, Ohio as well as in Rockingham County, Virginia.
John and Sarah corresponded with Simpson and Weir relatives back in Pennsylvania. It wasn't long before news came that Hannah Weir Simpson had married Jesse Root Grant and in 1822 they became the parents of future President Ulysses Simpson Grant!
In 1815 John Weir was elected an Elder for the church. His father Samuel had died in 1811 and was buried next to his mother in the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church cemetery. John's son Samuel, named after his grandfather, married the granddaughter of James Weir, one of the first Weirs in the Bucks County. Samuel inherited his grandfather's EIGHT DAY CLOCK and 10 pounds!
Nathaniel Irwin died in 1812 and was buried as he requested at the spot in the cemetery where the pulpit of the original church stood. Not surprising, there was a funeral procession of carriages extending one and one half miles from his home on Easton Road to the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church. I imagine that John and Mary McKinstry Weir's carriage was in that procession. Thomas McKinstry Weir ran a store at Weirs' Corner for a while before moving west with his family and settling in Indiana. John Weir died in 1840 and his land was divided between the remaining three brothers, James, Nathan, and Robert. John and Mary's daughters, Mary, Margaret, and Priscilla, never married. After their father's death they and their mother lived with James in the family home.
ROBERT MCKINSTRY WEIR (d.1874) AND JANE BRADY
Robert McKinstry Weir married Jane Brady abt 1843 and had four children. Occasionally relatives who had moved to Ohio would return to visit their relatives in Pennsylvania. Robert remembers the visit of a young officer, just graduated from West Point Military Academy in 1843, on his way home to visit his parents in Ohio. Samuel Weir was the grandfather of Robert and the great grandfather of the visitor who asked to visit Samuel's home as well as Simpson relatives in Bucks County. Ten years later the same relative visited relatives in the township. It was quite an honor to see this relative elected President of the United States after the Civil War!
Robert and his brother James lived near each other and the houses still stand! Jane's sister raised Thomas and Catherine, the younger children, after Jane died. John died at 26. According to the 1870 Census, James and Thomas hired out as farm laborers, James with the Lighman Hoover family and Thomas with the Nathan Wiser family.
In September of 1840 ten days of evangelistic services were held very near Weir's Corner in a wooded grove belonging to Jacob Cassel in Montgomery County. The meetings took place a few miles south of Pleasantville and not far from the Weir homes. The Rev. Charles H. Ewing, an evangelist for the Reformed Church, led the "camp meetings". When the weather made it impractical to meet outdoors the worshipers assembled in the barn of Frederick W. Hoover, a member of Boehm's Reformed Church in Blue Bell. There were a number of conversions during the ten days of meetings and a small steadfast group met at the Hoover home at the end of September to organize a new church. The Reformed denomination was chosen and the first service was held at the County Line School. There is no evidence that the Weirs attended these meetings but they later joined this church, probably because it was much closer to their homes.
JAMES BRADY WEIR (d. 1915) AND EMMA JANE DANNEHOWER
Within a year volunteers in the Reformed Church built a brick structure, fifty-one feet by sixty feet, on two-acres of land donated by John Dunlap on the Limekiln Pike. In March of 1874 James Weir, a grandson of John and Mary McKinstry Weir and oldest surviving son of Robert and Jane Brady Weir, married Emma Jane Dannehower at the little brick church. Emma Jane's parents were most likely members. James and Emma Jane attended the church and their children were baptized as infants in the church. In 1898 the present stone church was constructed and James Weir and Emma Jane Dannehower Weir are buried in the adjoining cemetery of the Pleasantville Reformed Church. In 1923 the children and grandchildren of Emma Jane and James Weir gathered at the home of Effie and Jesse Freas in Ambler to bid farewell to Ella May (Weir) and Edward Mulliken who moved to California. For many years the family met each year at the farms of members. Today the Weir family Reunions are held the first Sunday in August every year at the Pleasantville Church, now called the United Church of Christ.
Donna Null Basinger
http://donnagene53.tripod.com/
-----Original Message-----
From: Charlie Dinan [mailto:(XXXXX@XXXX.XXX)]
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 9:57 AM
To: Donna Basinger
Subject: Re: Weir Home
Mailing address:
Charles Dinan
113 Breezy Hollow Drive
Warrington, PA 18976
This is our primary residence. My wife (Kerri) and I and our four young sons. Kerri asked me to look at a building lot in the Whisper Ridge Development (This is the recent development built on the farms land. The good news is they built 20 homes on 30 acres. Normally they build a lot more on much smaller individual home lots) While looking at the building lot I spotted the farm house and barn. It had been completely abandoned for three years and very overgrown by vegetation. Like you, after walking through the home (I entered through an unlocked window), I fell in love with the home and barn. My wife thought I was crazy and never dreamed that I would actually buy the home. Boy was she wrong. I bought it and started on a one year restoration / addition. It has come out beautifully and we salvaged all of the homes original character (including a new cedar shake roof). I'll e-mail some digital pictures soon. Again, thanks for the time and color copies of any photos that you have would be very welcome.
Thanks,
Charlie
WEIRS IN WARRINGTON TOWNSHIP, BUCKS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
Not far from Bath, the overflow (from Bucks County) Scotch-Irish Settlement at the Forks of the Delaware in Pennsylvania (Northampton County), a spiritual awakening rumbled. Students from the Rev. William Tennent's "Log College" on the Banks of the Neshaminy in Bucks County, as it was derisively called, traveled as far north as Londonderry, New Hampshire and preached in the meetinghouse to all who would attend.
The name of Weir began to show up in the Scotch Irish community along the Neshaminy Creek in Bucks County along with the names of other Scotch-Irish families from Londonderry, New Hampshire and elsewhere. There were Craigs, Walkers, Grays, Creightons, Barclays, and McKinstrys by 1740. The Carrell family lived on the farm adjoining the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church. The Log College was a mile down the road across from the Tennent home. By 1740 Robert Weir (who may have been a son of Robert and Martha of Nutfield) fell in love with and married Rebecca Carrell. By 1740 John Weir and James Weir owned land about 10 miles from the church and a William Weir owned land in Springfield Township, Bucks County. By the late 1750's Samuel Weir lived on John Weir's tract and Robert and Rebecca Carrel Weir had moved to Augusta County, Virginia (now Rockbridge County) where many of the same names in Londonderry, New Hampshire and Bucks County appeared.
Thanks to the research of Evelyn Eisenhard, I do have DOCUMENTATION for the family of Samuel Weir and his descendants. According to JoAnn Wear Spore, Samuel was the son of John Weir. I have read Samuel's will, walked through the restored homes of Samuel Weir and his son John, and visited the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church and site of the famous "log college" at Neshaminy. By reading about the ministers who served the congregation at Neshaminy in the 1700's, about the Log College (which served as a model for the more formal college its students helped establish at Princeton), and about the Great Awakening......I have learned a great deal about the religious and historical context of the lives of ancestors.
Ten years before the names of John and James Weir appear on the records, central Bucks County was little more than a wilderness with no roads. Each year more and more Scotch-Irish "dissenters" were among the refugees attracted to William Penn's Colony and the ones who, after landing at Philadelphia (the largest port in the colonies), made their way up the Delaware River to the mouth of the Neshaminy. Then they headed north using the Neshaminy Creek as their highway and finally built primitive homes on its banks. By the time John and James arrived in Pennsylvania (from New England or Ireland), the Scotch-Irish in the area had formally established two townships, called a minister, and erected a building for their Presbyterian Church.
SAMUEL WEIR (d.1811) AND MARY
Samuel Weir grew up attending church in an "elegant stone building 40 feet by 30 fitted for galleries and the front hewn of stone." But more important than the facility was the extraordinary preaching the Weirs heard every Sunday and the remarkable company in which they found themselves. The Rev. William Tennent (1673-1746) was an aging Scotsman who had graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1695 and served as "domestic chaplain" to Lady Anne, Duchess of Hamilton as an Anglican minister. In Ireland he adopted he Presbyterian Faith and married the daughter of a dissenting minister, Catherine Kennedy. He served a few other churches in the colonies before moving his wife, four sons and a daughter to the Pennsylvania wilderness.
From the time he arrived in America in 1718, the Rev. William Tennent schooled his four sons in classics and theology. He was "convinced that a well-educated ministry was vital to a developing nation" and dismayed that William and Mary, Harvard, and Yale were at too great a distance for many seeking to train for the ministry. With the assistance of his sons and neighbors he built a large building from logs in the surrounding forest. A small group of dedicated young men moved into the crude attic above the only classroom and cooked many meals in the open fireplace. Some of the students boarded in the Tennent home with the youngest Tennent sons. They arose for prayers at 5 A.M. and studied many subjects including Latin, Greek, and Hebrew until 9 P.M. when they went to bed. The students were impressed with Mr. Tennent's skill in the ancient languages but they were even more impressed with his own character and love for Jesus Christ. A writer in the May issue of the (Presbyterian) Assembly's Magazine, for the year 1805, says of Mr. Tennent:
"He was eminent as a classical scholar. His attainments in science are not so well known, but there is reason to believe that they were not so great as his skill in language. To William Tennent, above all others is owing the prosperity and enlargement of the Presbyterian Church. Tennent had the rare gift of attracting to him youth of worth and genius, imbuing them with his healthful spirit, and sending them forth, sound in the faith, blameless in life, burning with zeal, and unsurpassed as instructive and successful preachers."
His students went on to establish over 60 educational institutions in the colonies! It is said that people stood in deep snow for hours, transfixed by the Rev. William Tennent's eloquent and life changing sermons.
"In addition to his sons, Tennent educated Samuel Blair, John Blair, Samuel Finley, William Robinson, John Rowland, Charles Beatty, Charles McKnight, and others. We find these men preaching from Massachusetts to the Carolinas, now warning the 'secure' of a sophisticated congregation in Boston, or New York, now bringing their message to a handful of settlers on the upper Susquehanna....or in far off Rockbridge County in the valley of Virginia."
When Samuel was a teenager the "Great Awakening" spread through the land "producing a freshening of interest in things spiritual, and underscoring the need for a personal experience of salvation." The young men of the "log college", Samuel's minister, and the sons of his minister were considered leaders in the Great Awakening. They were on the "New Side" in the ensuing divisions that occurred in every church and denomination between those who welcomed the revival and those who disagreed with the emphasis on experience. The "Old Side" was wary of the many excesses surrounding the revival meetings. Perhaps these same tensions contributed to the division in the Presbyterian churches in Londonderry, New Hampshire!
"Most of the recent Scotch Irish immigrants, the "Old Side," favored a tightly organized church with traditional educational standards for ministers and great emphasis on the Westminster Confession. Presbyterians from New England and the Tennent group, the "New Side," did not turn away from these traditional Presbyterian emphases, but they did want to promote revival and vital piety even if it meant relaxing traditional standards."
In 1739 William Tennent rode his horse into Philadelphia to invite the magnetic 24 year-old Anglican preacher and evangelist, George Whitefield, to come to Neshaminy. The church's name appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette insuring that EVERYONE in the area came. Over 3,000 people turned up in Mr. Tennent's meetinghouse yard to hear the sermon.
"When word was brought that the popular evangelist was preaching in the vicinity, farmers dropped their implements in the fields, and rode their horses to a lather to hear him. So great was the range of his voice that Benjamin Franklin decided to measure it, and concluded that 30,000 people could hear him speak from an outdoor stage."
It is likely that the Weirs were among the 3,000 that November day in 1739!
From the journal of the Rev. George Whitefield
Thursday, November 22
Set out for Neshamini (20 miles distant from Trent Town) where old Mr. Tennent lives and keeps an Academy where I was to preach to Day, according to Appointment. About Twelve we came thither, and found above 3,000 People gather'd together in the Meeting-House Yard; and Mr. William Tennent...preaching to them, because we had stayed beyond the Time appointed. When I came up, he soon stopp'd and sung a Psalm, and then I began to speak as the Lord gave me Utterance. At first the People seemed unaffected, but in the midst of my Discourse, the Power of the Lord Jesus came upon me... The Hearers began to be melted down immediately, and very much...After our Exercises were over, we went to old Mr. Tennent's, who entertain'd us like one of the ancient Patriarchs. His wife to me seemed like Elizabeth, and he like Zacchary...we had sweet Communion with each other, and spent the Evening in concerting what Mesure had best be taken for promoting our dear Lord's Kingdom. It happens very providentially, that Mr. Tennent...intends breeding up gracious Youths...The place wherein the Young men study now is in contempt called the College. It is a log-house, about twenty feet long, and near as many broad and to me it seemed to resemble the Schools of the Old Prophets...All that can be said of most of our publick University is, they are all glorious WITHOUT. From this despised place seven or eight worthy Ministers of Jesus have lately been sent forth; more are almost ready to be sent, and a Foundation is now laying for Instruction of many others....
It is surprising how such Bodies of People so scattered abroad can be gathered at so short a Warning. I believe
at Neshamini there might be near a thousand horses, which the people do not sit on to hear the Sermon as in England, but tied them to the Hedges; and thereby much Disorder is prevented.
The Rev. George Whitefield, wrote to a friend in Philadelphia, July 15th, 1740:
"I rejoice you have been at Nashaminy. I can say of Mr. Tennent and his brethren as David did of Goliath's sword: 'None like them.' "
He returned to the church yard in April of 1740 and August of 1754 and the crowds were even larger! Again, it is safe to say that our Weir relatives living in the area at the time returned both times to hear Mr. Whitefield. (See Notes for John Weir Sr. for a sermon of Whitefield's)
Meanwhile, William Tennent retired in 1742 and died in 1746. In 1743 the Rev. Gilbert Tennent returned to his father's church to preach the ordination sermon for Charles Clinton Beatty, an alumni of the Log College. Mr. Beatty was the minister through the French and Indian War until he died of Yellow Fever on a trip to Barbados in 1772. He will always be remembered for his mission trips to the frontier settlements and Indian villages west of Pittsburgh, for his successful fundraising trips to England, and for uniting the New Side and Old Side parties of the church in 1758. Beatty (as Chaplain) accompanied Benjamin Franklin and five hundred men who traveled to western Pennsylvania to defend the frontier, after the burning of the Moravian missionaries at Gnadenhuetten, near Lehighton. In 1754 Samuel Weir became a Trustee of the church while the Rev. Beatty was the pastor.
Samuel and his family traveled about 10 miles each Sunday to church. Just as was noted in Londonderry, New Hampshire the parishioners often walked eight or ten miles with their shoes and stockings in their hands. When they reached a spring near the meetinghouse they washed their feet put on their shoes before entering the sanctuary. The sermons frequently lasted two hours. There was no Sunday School or Nursery. Music was an important part of the service but very different than our choirs of today. Neshaminy did not have a choir during Samuel's lifetime although instruments were used occasionally by Nathaniel Irwin. One or two men sat in the front of the pulpit facing the congregation and stood up to "set the tunes" for the congregation. Only after the Revolution was anything used besides Rouse's version of the Psalms of David. Nathaniel Irwin slowly and cautiously introduced Watts' hymns. Samuel was probably at church the day that one worshipper was so upset that he picked up his hat and walked out before the service was over. He stormed up the hill to the tavern in Warrington:
"When questioned by the men at the bar about his early departure, he fumed that they were doing nothing but singing Yankee Doodle songs and play house tunes, down at Neshaminy. He then ordered a "gill o'rum" to quench his disgust"
In 1774 a call was given to the Rev. Nathaniel Irwin, the person who wrote Samuel's will and was named a "friend" of Samuel Weir. Nathaniel was about eight or nine years younger than Samuel and was the muscular son of spinning wheel maker from Chester County. While at Princeton Nathaniel and James Madison founded the Whig Society. He was a very popular minister and the congregation grew rapidly. He played the violin with some skill and loved to organize social gatherings for the young people of the church at his home. He even entertained them with music and dancing. People admired the vegetables he grew at his large farm off Easton Road and most of all the 'chaise' that transported him around the area. He was the first one to own such a vehicle.
The Rev. Irwin was single when he was called to the church but married Martha Jamison in 1777. She was the daughter of the innkeeper whose nearby inn was a meeting place for Bucks County Revolutionary committees. Sadly, Nathaniel's son became an alcoholic and his wife an adulterer. When she died in 1806 he married again to a "discreet and sensible helpmeet." To supplement his income he prescribed medicines and wrote wills. He wrote the will for Samuel, Ann Weir (daughter of James), and probably many others in our family.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Besides the marriage celebration of Nathaniel Irwin to Martha Jamison that our Weirs may have attended in 1777, the BIGGEST news of the year concerned Washington's 11,000 troops who camped around the church! They crossed the Delaware River at New Hope and marched down York Road right by the tavern owned by Martha Jamison's father! They marched toward Philadelphia but returned a few days later to set up camp at the Crossroads. Samuel's sons John and James served in the Revolutionary war in 1776,1777, and 1778 but it is not clear where they were in 1777. Adam Kerr owned the tavern at the Crossroads and was delighted with his booming business. The church was used to shelter the sick and wounded and some were buried in the cemetery in unmarked graves. The tent city was half the size of Philadelphia and we can assume that our relatives sold or contributed food from their gardens and meat from their supplies for the hungry soldiers that very hot and humid August. It has been said that there were no Tories or Pacifists among the Scotch-Irish. However, the Tent City in their backyard most likely strained the residents' enthusiasm a bit!
Late though it was when the troops arrived at the Crossroads that Sunday evening one of the first orders issued according to Gen. Muhlenberg's Orderly Book was:
"As it is uncertain how long we shall remain in the Present Encampment the Soldiers are to fix Booths before their Tents to shelter them from the Heat. The Qr. Masters are to give directions Immediately to have Vaults [latrines] dug in proper and Convenient Places...." These "vaults" were to be camouflaged with "Bows and Bushes" in a single line to the rear of the camp. The men were reminded that at their previous encampment there had been complaints that the "Offensive smells" had become a "public nusence."
General Washington established his headquarters at the Moland house (John Moland was recently deceased), overlooking the Neshaminy Creek. Betsy Ross' flag was flown there for the first time, Count Pulaski was introduced to General Washington, and Lafayette assumed his command during those 11 days in August. At the end of the 11 days Washington called a Council of War in the reception room of the Moland house. Present at the council, in addition to the Commander-in-Chief, were Major Generals Greene, Stirling, Stephen, and Lafayette; and Brigadier Generals Maxwell, Knox, Wayne, Muhlenberg, Weedon, Woodford, Scott, and Conway. Lafayette, only nineteen years of age, was welcomed into the group for the first time.
In Davis' HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY he describes the Moland farm house. The description will give us an idea how the homes of Samuel and John compared with others in 1777:
"substantial stone dwelling...in good preservation.....
As when Washington occupied it, the first floor of the main building is divided into two rooms with the entry near the kitchen; the larger room being on the south (west) side and entered from the porch, the smaller, back. The latter is thought to have been used by Washington as an office, the larger a reception room. In each there was an open fireplace and then as now a door opened into the kitchen. There has been no change in the porches in sixty years, and similar ones may have been there 1777-8."
Others called it the "best finished house in the neighborhood" at the time of the Revolution. Most structures were built of logs and still consisted of one room downstairs and a loft above. As someone has exclaimed, "John Moland's stone house must have seemed palatial."
JOHN WEIR (d. 1840) AND MARY MCKINSTRY
When the war was over our Weir relatives suffered with everyone else from the depreciation of the paper money issued by Congress. Available land was scarce in Bucks County and neighbors and family members continued to move south by way of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and west to Indiana and Ohio. Samuel's son John married Mary McKinstry and Samuel's daughter Mary married Robert McKinstry, brother to Mary. John inherited land and built his home (Field of Praise) at the end of a long lane off of Upper State Road. Weirs' Corner is located at the intersection of Upper State Road and the Limekiln Pike. A Historical Marker marked Weirs' Corner in the late 1970's but has been removed.
In 1793 John was the collector of pew rents at Neshaminy Presbyterian Church and in October his younger sister Rebecca married John Roberts Simpson at the church. John and Rebecca had four children, all baptized at Neshaminy Presbyterian Church by the Reverend Nathaniel Irwin. Hannah Weir Simpson was born in Whitemarsh, Montgomery County on November 23, 1798 and baptized in February by the Rev. Nathaniel Irwin. Before Hannah turned five her mother, Rebecca Weir Simpson died. Although a marker has not been found, it is likely that she was buried at Neshaminy Presbyterian church with the sermon given by the Rev. Nathaniel Irwin. John Simpson then married Sarah Hare, a granddaughter of Benjamin Hare. The four Simpson children as well as the children of John Weir and Mary McKinstry attended the County Line schoolhouse when a teacher was available. The schoolhouse was just opposite the Simpson Homestead although in another county. Every Sunday afternoon visiting ministers held services at the schoolhouse and Hannah attended these meetings with her family and possibly grandparents and relatives.
When Hannah was a teenager her father took her on a trip in a wagon across the Allegheny Mountains to look at property in Ohio. Joseph Gilkeyson of Roxborough went along to help with the horses and other chores. When they stopped at Inns and Public Houses along the way, John Simpson had a problem he never anticipated. His daughter was too attractive and the young men who saw her asked John Simpson unending questions about his daughter. Annoyed with the excess attention that his daughter received, he told everyone that John Gilkeyson was her husband. That apparently solved the problem. In 1817 John's oldest daughter and husband moved to Bethel, Clermont County, Ohio. In the spring of 1819 John Simpson moved his family to Ohio. Many other families from the area had already settled in Cermont County, Ohio as well as in Rockingham County, Virginia.
John and Sarah corresponded with Simpson and Weir relatives back in Pennsylvania. It wasn't long before news came that Hannah Weir Simpson had married Jesse Root Grant and in 1822 they became the parents of future President Ulysses Simpson Grant!
In 1815 John Weir was elected an Elder for the church. His father Samuel had died in 1811 and was buried next to his mother in the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church cemetery. John's son Samuel, named after his grandfather, married the granddaughter of James Weir, one of the first Weirs in the Bucks County. Samuel inherited his grandfather's EIGHT DAY CLOCK and 10 pounds!
Nathaniel Irwin died in 1812 and was buried as he requested at the spot in the cemetery where the pulpit of the original church stood. Not surprising, there was a funeral procession of carriages extending one and one half miles from his home on Easton Road to the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church. I imagine that John and Mary McKinstry Weir's carriage was in that procession. Thomas McKinstry Weir ran a store at Weirs' Corner for a while before moving west with his family and settling in Indiana. John Weir died in 1840 and his land was divided between the remaining three brothers, James, Nathan, and Robert. John and Mary's daughters, Mary, Margaret, and Priscilla, never married. After their father's death they and their mother lived with James in the family home.
ROBERT MCKINSTRY WEIR (d.1874) AND JANE BRADY
Robert McKinstry Weir married Jane Brady abt 1843 and had four children. Occasionally relatives who had moved to Ohio would return to visit their relatives in Pennsylvania. Robert remembers the visit of a young officer, just graduated from West Point Military Academy in 1843, on his way home to visit his parents in Ohio. Samuel Weir was the grandfather of Robert and the great grandfather of the visitor who asked to visit Samuel's home as well as Simpson relatives in Bucks County. Ten years later the same relative visited relatives in the township. It was quite an honor to see this relative elected President of the United States after the Civil War!
Robert and his brother James lived near each other and the houses still stand! Jane's sister raised Thomas and Catherine, the younger children, after Jane died. John died at 26. According to the 1870 Census, James and Thomas hired out as farm laborers, James with the Lighman Hoover family and Thomas with the Nathan Wiser family.
In September of 1840 ten days of evangelistic services were held very near Weir's Corner in a wooded grove belonging to Jacob Cassel in Montgomery County. The meetings took place a few miles south of Pleasantville and not far from the Weir homes. The Rev. Charles H. Ewing, an evangelist for the Reformed Church, led the "camp meetings". When the weather made it impractical to meet outdoors the worshipers assembled in the barn of Frederick W. Hoover, a member of Boehm's Reformed Church in Blue Bell. There were a number of conversions during the ten days of meetings and a small steadfast group met at the Hoover home at the end of September to organize a new church. The Reformed denomination was chosen and the first service was held at the County Line School. There is no evidence that the Weirs attended these meetings but they later joined this church, probably because it was much closer to their homes.
JAMES BRADY WEIR (d. 1915) AND EMMA JANE DANNEHOWER
Within a year volunteers in the Reformed Church built a brick structure, fifty-one feet by sixty feet, on two-acres of land donated by John Dunlap on the Limekiln Pike. In March of 1874 James Weir, a grandson of John and Mary McKinstry Weir and oldest surviving son of Robert and Jane Brady Weir, married Emma Jane Dannehower at the little brick church. Emma Jane's parents were most likely members. James and Emma Jane attended the church and their children were baptized as infants in the church. In 1898 the present stone church was constructed and James Weir and Emma Jane Dannehower Weir are buried in the adjoining cemetery of the Pleasantville Reformed Church. In 1923 the children and grandchildren of Emma Jane and James Weir gathered at the home of Effie and Jesse Freas in Ambler to bid farewell to Ella May (Weir) and Edward Mulliken who moved to California. For many years the family met each year at the farms of members. Today the Weir family Reunions are held the first Sunday in August every year at the Pleasantville Church, now called the United Church of Christ.
Charles Dinan
113 Breezy Hollow Drive
Warrington, PA 18976
Birth:1752 Death:Apr. 24, 1840
Family links:
Spouse:
Mary McKinstry Weir (1763 - 1851)
Inscription:
age 88 years
Burial:
Neshaminy Cemetery
Hartsville
Bucks County
Pennsylvania, USA
Created by: Anonymous
Record added: Nov 08, 2009
Find A Grave Memorial# 44071445
Subject:
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 13:03:35 -0500
From: (XXXXX@XXXX.XXX)
To: (XXXXX@XXXX.XXX)
Donna,
Itâs been a while but I am the current owner of John and mary Weirs Bucks County farmhouse. I trust all is well. My question is Å who currently owns Weirs corner?
Charlie Dinan
Donna Null Basinger
http://donnagene53.tripod.com/
-----Original Message-----
From: Charlie Dinan [mailto:(XXXXX@XXXX.XXX)]
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 9:57 AM
To: Donna Basinger
Subject: Re: Weir Home
Mailing address:
Charles Dinan
113 Breezy Hollow Drive
Warrington, PA 18976
This is our primary residence. My wife (Kerri) and I and our four young sons. Kerri asked me to look at a building lot in the Whisper Ridge Development (This is the recent development built on the farms land. The good news is they built 20 homes on 30 acres. Normally they build a lot more on much smaller individual home lots) While looking at the building lot I spotted the farm house and barn. It had been completely abandoned for three years and very overgrown by vegetation. Like you, after walking through the home (I entered through an unlocked window), I fell in love with the home and barn. My wife thought I was crazy and never dreamed that I would actually buy the home. Boy was she wrong. I bought it and started on a one year restoration / addition. It has come out beautifully and we salvaged all of the homes original character (including a new cedar shake roof). I'll e-mail some digital pictures soon. Again, thanks for the time and color copies of any photos that you have would be very welcome.
Thanks,
Charlie
WEIRS IN WARRINGTON TOWNSHIP, BUCKS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
Not far from Bath, the overflow (from Bucks County) Scotch-Irish Settlement at the Forks of the Delaware in Pennsylvania (Northampton County), a spiritual awakening rumbled. Students from the Rev. William Tennent's "Log College" on the Banks of the Neshaminy in Bucks County, as it was derisively called, traveled as far north as Londonderry, New Hampshire and preached in the meetinghouse to all who would attend.
The name of Weir began to show up in the Scotch Irish community along the Neshaminy Creek in Bucks County along with the names of other Scotch-Irish families from Londonderry, New Hampshire and elsewhere. There were Craigs, Walkers, Grays, Creightons, Barclays, and McKinstrys by 1740. The Carrell family lived on the farm adjoining the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church. The Log College was a mile down the road across from the Tennent home. By 1740 Robert Weir (who may have been a son of Robert and Martha of Nutfield) fell in love with and married Rebecca Carrell. By 1740 John Weir and James Weir owned land about 10 miles from the church and a William Weir owned land in Springfield Township, Bucks County. By the late 1750's Samuel Weir lived on John Weir's tract and Robert and Rebecca Carrel Weir had moved to Augusta County, Virginia (now Rockbridge County) where many of the same names in Londonderry, New Hampshire and Bucks County appeared.
Thanks to the research of Evelyn Eisenhard, I do have DOCUMENTATION for the family of Samuel Weir and his descendants. According to JoAnn Wear Spore, Samuel was the son of John Weir. I have read Samuel's will, walked through the restored homes of Samuel Weir and his son John, and visited the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church and site of the famous "log college" at Neshaminy. By reading about the ministers who served the congregation at Neshaminy in the 1700's, about the Log College (which served as a model for the more formal college its students helped establish at Princeton), and about the Great Awakening......I have learned a great deal about the religious and historical context of the lives of ancestors.
Ten years before the names of John and James Weir appear on the records, central Bucks County was little more than a wilderness with no roads. Each year more and more Scotch-Irish "dissenters" were among the refugees attracted to William Penn's Colony and the ones who, after landing at Philadelphia (the largest port in the colonies), made their way up the Delaware River to the mouth of the Neshaminy. Then they headed north using the Neshaminy Creek as their highway and finally built primitive homes on its banks. By the time John and James arrived in Pennsylvania (from New England or Ireland), the Scotch-Irish in the area had formally established two townships, called a minister, and erected a building for their Presbyterian Church.
SAMUEL WEIR (d.1811) AND MARY
Samuel Weir grew up attending church in an "elegant stone building 40 feet by 30 fitted for galleries and the front hewn of stone." But more important than the facility was the extraordinary preaching the Weirs heard every Sunday and the remarkable company in which they found themselves. The Rev. William Tennent (1673-1746) was an aging Scotsman who had graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1695 and served as "domestic chaplain" to Lady Anne, Duchess of Hamilton as an Anglican minister. In Ireland he adopted he Presbyterian Faith and married the daughter of a dissenting minister, Catherine Kennedy. He served a few other churches in the colonies before moving his wife, four sons and a daughter to the Pennsylvania wilderness.
From the time he arrived in America in 1718, the Rev. William Tennent schooled his four sons in classics and theology. He was "convinced that a well-educated ministry was vital to a developing nation" and dismayed that William and Mary, Harvard, and Yale were at too great a distance for many seeking to train for the ministry. With the assistance of his sons and neighbors he built a large building from logs in the surrounding forest. A small group of dedicated young men moved into the crude attic above the only classroom and cooked many meals in the open fireplace. Some of the students boarded in the Tennent home with the youngest Tennent sons. They arose for prayers at 5 A.M. and studied many subjects including Latin, Greek, and Hebrew until 9 P.M. when they went to bed. The students were impressed with Mr. Tennent's skill in the ancient languages but they were even more impressed with his own character and love for Jesus Christ. A writer in the May issue of the (Presbyterian) Assembly's Magazine, for the year 1805, says of Mr. Tennent:
"He was eminent as a classical scholar. His attainments in science are not so well known, but there is reason to believe that they were not so great as his skill in language. To William Tennent, above all others is owing the prosperity and enlargement of the Presbyterian Church. Tennent had the rare gift of attracting to him youth of worth and genius, imbuing them with his healthful spirit, and sending them forth, sound in the faith, blameless in life, burning with zeal, and unsurpassed as instructive and successful preachers."
His students went on to establish over 60 educational institutions in the colonies! It is said that people stood in deep snow for hours, transfixed by the Rev. William Tennent's eloquent and life changing sermons.
"In addition to his sons, Tennent educated Samuel Blair, John Blair, Samuel Finley, William Robinson, John Rowland, Charles Beatty, Charles McKnight, and others. We find these men preaching from Massachusetts to the Carolinas, now warning the 'secure' of a sophisticated congregation in Boston, or New York, now bringing their message to a handful of settlers on the upper Susquehanna....or in far off Rockbridge County in the valley of Virginia."
When Samuel was a teenager the "Great Awakening" spread through the land "producing a freshening of interest in things spiritual, and underscoring the need for a personal experience of salvation." The young men of the "log college", Samuel's minister, and the sons of his minister were considered leaders in the Great Awakening. They were on the "New Side" in the ensuing divisions that occurred in every church and denomination between those who welcomed the revival and those who disagreed with the emphasis on experience. The "Old Side" was wary of the many excesses surrounding the revival meetings. Perhaps these same tensions contributed to the division in the Presbyterian churches in Londonderry, New Hampshire!
"Most of the recent Scotch Irish immigrants, the "Old Side," favored a tightly organized church with traditional educational standards for ministers and great emphasis on the Westminster Confession. Presbyterians from New England and the Tennent group, the "New Side," did not turn away from these traditional Presbyterian emphases, but they did want to promote revival and vital piety even if it meant relaxing traditional standards."
In 1739 William Tennent rode his horse into Philadelphia to invite the magnetic 24 year-old Anglican preacher and evangelist, George Whitefield, to come to Neshaminy. The church's name appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette insuring that EVERYONE in the area came. Over 3,000 people turned up in Mr. Tennent's meetinghouse yard to hear the sermon.
"When word was brought that the popular evangelist was preaching in the vicinity, farmers dropped their implements in the fields, and rode their horses to a lather to hear him. So great was the range of his voice that Benjamin Franklin decided to measure it, and concluded that 30,000 people could hear him speak from an outdoor stage."
It is likely that the Weirs were among the 3,000 that November day in 1739!
From the journal of the Rev. George Whitefield
Thursday, November 22
Set out for Neshamini (20 miles distant from Trent Town) where old Mr. Tennent lives and keeps an Academy where I was to preach to Day, according to Appointment. About Twelve we came thither, and found above 3,000 People gather'd together in the Meeting-House Yard; and Mr. William Tennent...preaching to them, because we had stayed beyond the Time appointed. When I came up, he soon stopp'd and sung a Psalm, and then I began to speak as the Lord gave me Utterance. At first the People seemed unaffected, but in the midst of my Discourse, the Power of the Lord Jesus came upon me... The Hearers began to be melted down immediately, and very much...After our Exercises were over, we went to old Mr. Tennent's, who entertain'd us like one of the ancient Patriarchs. His wife to me seemed like Elizabeth, and he like Zacchary...we had sweet Communion with each other, and spent the Evening in concerting what Mesure had best be taken for promoting our dear Lord's Kingdom. It happens very providentially, that Mr. Tennent...intends breeding up gracious Youths...The place wherein the Young men study now is in contempt called the College. It is a log-house, about twenty feet long, and near as many broad and to me it seemed to resemble the Schools of the Old Prophets...All that can be said of most of our publick University is, they are all glorious WITHOUT. From this despised place seven or eight worthy Ministers of Jesus have lately been sent forth; more are almost ready to be sent, and a Foundation is now laying for Instruction of many others....
It is surprising how such Bodies of People so scattered abroad can be gathered at so short a Warning. I believe
at Neshamini there might be near a thousand horses, which the people do not sit on to hear the Sermon as in England, but tied them to the Hedges; and thereby much Disorder is prevented.
The Rev. George Whitefield, wrote to a friend in Philadelphia, July 15th, 1740:
"I rejoice you have been at Nashaminy. I can say of Mr. Tennent and his brethren as David did of Goliath's sword: 'None like them.' "
He returned to the church yard in April of 1740 and August of 1754 and the crowds were even larger! Again, it is safe to say that our Weir relatives living in the area at the time returned both times to hear Mr. Whitefield. (See Notes for John Weir Sr. for a sermon of Whitefield's)
Meanwhile, William Tennent retired in 1742 and died in 1746. In 1743 the Rev. Gilbert Tennent returned to his father's church to preach the ordination sermon for Charles Clinton Beatty, an alumni of the Log College. Mr. Beatty was the minister through the French and Indian War until he died of Yellow Fever on a trip to Barbados in 1772. He will always be remembered for his mission trips to the frontier settlements and Indian villages west of Pittsburgh, for his successful fundraising trips to England, and for uniting the New Side and Old Side parties of the church in 1758. Beatty (as Chaplain) accompanied Benjamin Franklin and five hundred men who traveled to western Pennsylvania to defend the frontier, after the burning of the Moravian missionaries at Gnadenhuetten, near Lehighton. In 1754 Samuel Weir became a Trustee of the church while the Rev. Beatty was the pastor.
Samuel and his family traveled about 10 miles each Sunday to church. Just as was noted in Londonderry, New Hampshire the parishioners often walked eight or ten miles with their shoes and stockings in their hands. When they reached a spring near the meetinghouse they washed their feet put on their shoes before entering the sanctuary. The sermons frequently lasted two hours. There was no Sunday School or Nursery. Music was an important part of the service but very different than our choirs of today. Neshaminy did not have a choir during Samuel's lifetime although instruments were used occasionally by Nathaniel Irwin. One or two men sat in the front of the pulpit facing the congregation and stood up to "set the tunes" for the congregation. Only after the Revolution was anything used besides Rouse's version of the Psalms of David. Nathaniel Irwin slowly and cautiously introduced Watts' hymns. Samuel was probably at church the day that one worshipper was so upset that he picked up his hat and walked out before the service was over. He stormed up the hill to the tavern in Warrington:
"When questioned by the men at the bar about his early departure, he fumed that they were doing nothing but singing Yankee Doodle songs and play house tunes, down at Neshaminy. He then ordered a "gill o'rum" to quench his disgust"
In 1774 a call was given to the Rev. Nathaniel Irwin, the person who wrote Samuel's will and was named a "friend" of Samuel Weir. Nathaniel was about eight or nine years younger than Samuel and was the muscular son of spinning wheel maker from Chester County. While at Princeton Nathaniel and James Madison founded the Whig Society. He was a very popular minister and the congregation grew rapidly. He played the violin with some skill and loved to organize social gatherings for the young people of the church at his home. He even entertained them with music and dancing. People admired the vegetables he grew at his large farm off Easton Road and most of all the 'chaise' that transported him around the area. He was the first one to own such a vehicle.
The Rev. Irwin was single when he was called to the church but married Martha Jamison in 1777. She was the daughter of the innkeeper whose nearby inn was a meeting place for Bucks County Revolutionary committees. Sadly, Nathaniel's son became an alcoholic and his wife an adulterer. When she died in 1806 he married again to a "discreet and sensible helpmeet." To supplement his income he prescribed medicines and wrote wills. He wrote the will for Samuel, Ann Weir (daughter of James), and probably many others in our family.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Besides the marriage celebration of Nathaniel Irwin to Martha Jamison that our Weirs may have attended in 1777, the BIGGEST news of the year concerned Washington's 11,000 troops who camped around the church! They crossed the Delaware River at New Hope and marched down York Road right by the tavern owned by Martha Jamison's father! They marched toward Philadelphia but returned a few days later to set up camp at the Crossroads. Samuel's sons John and James served in the Revolutionary war in 1776,1777, and 1778 but it is not clear where they were in 1777. Adam Kerr owned the tavern at the Crossroads and was delighted with his booming business. The church was used to shelter the sick and wounded and some were buried in the cemetery in unmarked graves. The tent city was half the size of Philadelphia and we can assume that our relatives sold or contributed food from their gardens and meat from their supplies for the hungry soldiers that very hot and humid August. It has been said that there were no Tories or Pacifists among the Scotch-Irish. However, the Tent City in their backyard most likely strained the residents' enthusiasm a bit!
Late though it was when the troops arrived at the Crossroads that Sunday evening one of the first orders issued according to Gen. Muhlenberg's Orderly Book was:
"As it is uncertain how long we shall remain in the Present Encampment the Soldiers are to fix Booths before their Tents to shelter them from the Heat. The Qr. Masters are to give directions Immediately to have Vaults [latrines] dug in proper and Convenient Places...." These "vaults" were to be camouflaged with "Bows and Bushes" in a single line to the rear of the camp. The men were reminded that at their previous encampment there had been complaints that the "Offensive smells" had become a "public nusence."
General Washington established his headquarters at the Moland house (John Moland was recently deceased), overlooking the Neshaminy Creek. Betsy Ross' flag was flown there for the first time, Count Pulaski was introduced to General Washington, and Lafayette assumed his command during those 11 days in August. At the end of the 11 days Washington called a Council of War in the reception room of the Moland house. Present at the council, in addition to the Commander-in-Chief, were Major Generals Greene, Stirling, Stephen, and Lafayette; and Brigadier Generals Maxwell, Knox, Wayne, Muhlenberg, Weedon, Woodford, Scott, and Conway. Lafayette, only nineteen years of age, was welcomed into the group for the first time.
In Davis' HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY he describes the Moland farm house. The description will give us an idea how the homes of Samuel and John compared with others in 1777:
"substantial stone dwelling...in good preservation.....
As when Washington occupied it, the first floor of the main building is divided into two rooms with the entry near the kitchen; the larger room being on the south (west) side and entered from the porch, the smaller, back. The latter is thought to have been used by Washington as an office, the larger a reception room. In each there was an open fireplace and then as now a door opened into the kitchen. There has been no change in the porches in sixty years, and similar ones may have been there 1777-8."
Others called it the "best finished house in the neighborhood" at the time of the Revolution. Most structures were built of logs and still consisted of one room downstairs and a loft above. As someone has exclaimed, "John Moland's stone house must have seemed palatial."
JOHN WEIR (d. 1840) AND MARY MCKINSTRY
When the war was over our Weir relatives suffered with everyone else from the depreciation of the paper money issued by Congress. Available land was scarce in Bucks County and neighbors and family members continued to move south by way of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and west to Indiana and Ohio. Samuel's son John married Mary McKinstry and Samuel's daughter Mary married Robert McKinstry, brother to Mary. John inherited land and built his home (Field of Praise) at the end of a long lane off of Upper State Road. Weirs' Corner is located at the intersection of Upper State Road and the Limekiln Pike. A Historical Marker marked Weirs' Corner in the late 1970's but has been removed.
In 1793 John was the collector of pew rents at Neshaminy Presbyterian Church and in October his younger sister Rebecca married John Roberts Simpson at the church. John and Rebecca had four children, all baptized at Neshaminy Presbyterian Church by the Reverend Nathaniel Irwin. Hannah Weir Simpson was born in Whitemarsh, Montgomery County on November 23, 1798 and baptized in February by the Rev. Nathaniel Irwin. Before Hannah turned five her mother, Rebecca Weir Simpson died. Although a marker has not been found, it is likely that she was buried at Neshaminy Presbyterian church with the sermon given by the Rev. Nathaniel Irwin. John Simpson then married Sarah Hare, a granddaughter of Benjamin Hare. The four Simpson children as well as the children of John Weir and Mary McKinstry attended the County Line schoolhouse when a teacher was available. The schoolhouse was just opposite the Simpson Homestead although in another county. Every Sunday afternoon visiting ministers held services at the schoolhouse and Hannah attended these meetings with her family and possibly grandparents and relatives.
When Hannah was a teenager her father took her on a trip in a wagon across the Allegheny Mountains to look at property in Ohio. Joseph Gilkeyson of Roxborough went along to help with the horses and other chores. When they stopped at Inns and Public Houses along the way, John Simpson had a problem he never anticipated. His daughter was too attractive and the young men who saw her asked John Simpson unending questions about his daughter. Annoyed with the excess attention that his daughter received, he told everyone that John Gilkeyson was her husband. That apparently solved the problem. In 1817 John's oldest daughter and husband moved to Bethel, Clermont County, Ohio. In the spring of 1819 John Simpson moved his family to Ohio. Many other families from the area had already settled in Cermont County, Ohio as well as in Rockingham County, Virginia.
John and Sarah corresponded with Simpson and Weir relatives back in Pennsylvania. It wasn't long before news came that Hannah Weir Simpson had married Jesse Root Grant and in 1822 they became the parents of future President Ulysses Simpson Grant!
In 1815 John Weir was elected an Elder for the church. His father Samuel had died in 1811 and was buried next to his mother in the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church cemetery. John's son Samuel, named after his grandfather, married the granddaughter of James Weir, one of the first Weirs in the Bucks County. Samuel inherited his grandfather's EIGHT DAY CLOCK and 10 pounds!
Nathaniel Irwin died in 1812 and was buried as he requested at the spot in the cemetery where the pulpit of the original church stood. Not surprising, there was a funeral procession of carriages extending one and one half miles from his home on Easton Road to the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church. I imagine that John and Mary McKinstry Weir's carriage was in that procession. Thomas McKinstry Weir ran a store at Weirs' Corner for a while before moving west with his family and settling in Indiana. John Weir died in 1840 and his land was divided between the remaining three brothers, James, Nathan, and Robert. John and Mary's daughters, Mary, Margaret, and Priscilla, never married. After their father's death they and their mother lived with James in the family home.
ROBERT MCKINSTRY WEIR (d.1874) AND JANE BRADY
Robert McKinstry Weir married Jane Brady abt 1843 and had four children. Occasionally relatives who had moved to Ohio would return to visit their relatives in Pennsylvania. Robert remembers the visit of a young officer, just graduated from West Point Military Academy in 1843, on his way home to visit his parents in Ohio. Samuel Weir was the grandfather of Robert and the great grandfather of the visitor who asked to visit Samuel's home as well as Simpson relatives in Bucks County. Ten years later the same relative visited relatives in the township. It was quite an honor to see this relative elected President of the United States after the Civil War!
Robert and his brother James lived near each other and the houses still stand! Jane's sister raised Thomas and Catherine, the younger children, after Jane died. John died at 26. According to the 1870 Census, James and Thomas hired out as farm laborers, James with the Lighman Hoover family and Thomas with the Nathan Wiser family.
In September of 1840 ten days of evangelistic services were held very near Weir's Corner in a wooded grove belonging to Jacob Cassel in Montgomery County. The meetings took place a few miles south of Pleasantville and not far from the Weir homes. The Rev. Charles H. Ewing, an evangelist for the Reformed Church, led the "camp meetings". When the weather made it impractical to meet outdoors the worshipers assembled in the barn of Frederick W. Hoover, a member of Boehm's Reformed Church in Blue Bell. There were a number of conversions during the ten days of meetings and a small steadfast group met at the Hoover home at the end of September to organize a new church. The Reformed denomination was chosen and the first service was held at the County Line School. There is no evidence that the Weirs attended these meetings but they later joined this church, probably because it was much closer to their homes.
JAMES BRADY WEIR (d. 1915) AND EMMA JANE DANNEHOWER
Within a year volunteers in the Reformed Church built a brick structure, fifty-one feet by sixty feet, on two-acres of land donated by John Dunlap on the Limekiln Pike. In March of 1874 James Weir, a grandson of John and Mary McKinstry Weir and oldest surviving son of Robert and Jane Brady Weir, married Emma Jane Dannehower at the little brick church. Emma Jane's parents were most likely members. James and Emma Jane attended the church and their children were baptized as infants in the church. In 1898 the present stone church was constructed and James Weir and Emma Jane Dannehower Weir are buried in the adjoining cemetery of the Pleasantville Reformed Church. In 1923 the children and grandchildren of Emma Jane and James Weir gathered at the home of Effie and Jesse Freas in Ambler to bid farewell to Ella May (Weir) and Edward Mulliken who moved to California. For many years the family met each year at the farms of members. Today the Weir family Reunions are held the first Sunday in August every year at the Pleasantville Church, now called the United Church of Christ.
Donna Null Basinger
http://donnagene53.tripod.com/
-----Original Message-----
From: Charlie Dinan [mailto:(XXXXX@XXXX.XXX)]
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 9:57 AM
To: Donna Basinger
Subject: Re: Weir Home
Mailing address:
Charles Dinan
113 Breezy Hollow Drive
Warrington, PA 18976
This is our primary residence. My wife (Kerri) and I and our four young sons. Kerri asked me to look at a building lot in the Whisper Ridge Development (This is the recent development built on the farms land. The good news is they built 20 homes on 30 acres. Normally they build a lot more on much smaller individual home lots) While looking at the building lot I spotted the farm house and barn. It had been completely abandoned for three years and very overgrown by vegetation. Like you, after walking through the home (I entered through an unlocked window), I fell in love with the home and barn. My wife thought I was crazy and never dreamed that I would actually buy the home. Boy was she wrong. I bought it and started on a one year restoration / addition. It has come out beautifully and we salvaged all of the homes original character (including a new cedar shake roof). I'll e-mail some digital pictures soon. Again, thanks for the time and color copies of any photos that you have would be very welcome.
Thanks,
Charlie
WEIRS IN WARRINGTON TOWNSHIP, BUCKS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
Not far from Bath, the overflow (from Bucks County) Scotch-Irish Settlement at the Forks of the Delaware in Pennsylvania (Northampton County), a spiritual awakening rumbled. Students from the Rev. William Tennent's "Log College" on the Banks of the Neshaminy in Bucks County, as it was derisively called, traveled as far north as Londonderry, New Hampshire and preached in the meetinghouse to all who would attend.
The name of Weir began to show up in the Scotch Irish community along the Neshaminy Creek in Bucks County along with the names of other Scotch-Irish families from Londonderry, New Hampshire and elsewhere. There were Craigs, Walkers, Grays, Creightons, Barclays, and McKinstrys by 1740. The Carrell family lived on the farm adjoining the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church. The Log College was a mile down the road across from the Tennent home. By 1740 Robert Weir (who may have been a son of Robert and Martha of Nutfield) fell in love with and married Rebecca Carrell. By 1740 John Weir and James Weir owned land about 10 miles from the church and a William Weir owned land in Springfield Township, Bucks County. By the late 1750's Samuel Weir lived on John Weir's tract and Robert and Rebecca Carrel Weir had moved to Augusta County, Virginia (now Rockbridge County) where many of the same names in Londonderry, New Hampshire and Bucks County appeared.
Thanks to the research of Evelyn Eisenhard, I do have DOCUMENTATION for the family of Samuel Weir and his descendants. According to JoAnn Wear Spore, Samuel was the son of John Weir. I have read Samuel's will, walked through the restored homes of Samuel Weir and his son John, and visited the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church and site of the famous "log college" at Neshaminy. By reading about the ministers who served the congregation at Neshaminy in the 1700's, about the Log College (which served as a model for the more formal college its students helped establish at Princeton), and about the Great Awakening......I have learned a great deal about the religious and historical context of the lives of ancestors.
Ten years before the names of John and James Weir appear on the records, central Bucks County was little more than a wilderness with no roads. Each year more and more Scotch-Irish "dissenters" were among the refugees attracted to William Penn's Colony and the ones who, after landing at Philadelphia (the largest port in the colonies), made their way up the Delaware River to the mouth of the Neshaminy. Then they headed north using the Neshaminy Creek as their highway and finally built primitive homes on its banks. By the time John and James arrived in Pennsylvania (from New England or Ireland), the Scotch-Irish in the area had formally established two townships, called a minister, and erected a building for their Presbyterian Church.
SAMUEL WEIR (d.1811) AND MARY
Samuel Weir grew up attending church in an "elegant stone building 40 feet by 30 fitted for galleries and the front hewn of stone." But more important than the facility was the extraordinary preaching the Weirs heard every Sunday and the remarkable company in which they found themselves. The Rev. William Tennent (1673-1746) was an aging Scotsman who had graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1695 and served as "domestic chaplain" to Lady Anne, Duchess of Hamilton as an Anglican minister. In Ireland he adopted he Presbyterian Faith and married the daughter of a dissenting minister, Catherine Kennedy. He served a few other churches in the colonies before moving his wife, four sons and a daughter to the Pennsylvania wilderness.
From the time he arrived in America in 1718, the Rev. William Tennent schooled his four sons in classics and theology. He was "convinced that a well-educated ministry was vital to a developing nation" and dismayed that William and Mary, Harvard, and Yale were at too great a distance for many seeking to train for the ministry. With the assistance of his sons and neighbors he built a large building from logs in the surrounding forest. A small group of dedicated young men moved into the crude attic above the only classroom and cooked many meals in the open fireplace. Some of the students boarded in the Tennent home with the youngest Tennent sons. They arose for prayers at 5 A.M. and studied many subjects including Latin, Greek, and Hebrew until 9 P.M. when they went to bed. The students were impressed with Mr. Tennent's skill in the ancient languages but they were even more impressed with his own character and love for Jesus Christ. A writer in the May issue of the (Presbyterian) Assembly's Magazine, for the year 1805, says of Mr. Tennent:
"He was eminent as a classical scholar. His attainments in science are not so well known, but there is reason to believe that they were not so great as his skill in language. To William Tennent, above all others is owing the prosperity and enlargement of the Presbyterian Church. Tennent had the rare gift of attracting to him youth of worth and genius, imbuing them with his healthful spirit, and sending them forth, sound in the faith, blameless in life, burning with zeal, and unsurpassed as instructive and successful preachers."
His students went on to establish over 60 educational institutions in the colonies! It is said that people stood in deep snow for hours, transfixed by the Rev. William Tennent's eloquent and life changing sermons.
"In addition to his sons, Tennent educated Samuel Blair, John Blair, Samuel Finley, William Robinson, John Rowland, Charles Beatty, Charles McKnight, and others. We find these men preaching from Massachusetts to the Carolinas, now warning the 'secure' of a sophisticated congregation in Boston, or New York, now bringing their message to a handful of settlers on the upper Susquehanna....or in far off Rockbridge County in the valley of Virginia."
When Samuel was a teenager the "Great Awakening" spread through the land "producing a freshening of interest in things spiritual, and underscoring the need for a personal experience of salvation." The young men of the "log college", Samuel's minister, and the sons of his minister were considered leaders in the Great Awakening. They were on the "New Side" in the ensuing divisions that occurred in every church and denomination between those who welcomed the revival and those who disagreed with the emphasis on experience. The "Old Side" was wary of the many excesses surrounding the revival meetings. Perhaps these same tensions contributed to the division in the Presbyterian churches in Londonderry, New Hampshire!
"Most of the recent Scotch Irish immigrants, the "Old Side," favored a tightly organized church with traditional educational standards for ministers and great emphasis on the Westminster Confession. Presbyterians from New England and the Tennent group, the "New Side," did not turn away from these traditional Presbyterian emphases, but they did want to promote revival and vital piety even if it meant relaxing traditional standards."
In 1739 William Tennent rode his horse into Philadelphia to invite the magnetic 24 year-old Anglican preacher and evangelist, George Whitefield, to come to Neshaminy. The church's name appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette insuring that EVERYONE in the area came. Over 3,000 people turned up in Mr. Tennent's meetinghouse yard to hear the sermon.
"When word was brought that the popular evangelist was preaching in the vicinity, farmers dropped their implements in the fields, and rode their horses to a lather to hear him. So great was the range of his voice that Benjamin Franklin decided to measure it, and concluded that 30,000 people could hear him speak from an outdoor stage."
It is likely that the Weirs were among the 3,000 that November day in 1739!
From the journal of the Rev. George Whitefield
Thursday, November 22
Set out for Neshamini (20 miles distant from Trent Town) where old Mr. Tennent lives and keeps an Academy where I was to preach to Day, according to Appointment. About Twelve we came thither, and found above 3,000 People gather'd together in the Meeting-House Yard; and Mr. William Tennent...preaching to them, because we had stayed beyond the Time appointed. When I came up, he soon stopp'd and sung a Psalm, and then I began to speak as the Lord gave me Utterance. At first the People seemed unaffected, but in the midst of my Discourse, the Power of the Lord Jesus came upon me... The Hearers began to be melted down immediately, and very much...After our Exercises were over, we went to old Mr. Tennent's, who entertain'd us like one of the ancient Patriarchs. His wife to me seemed like Elizabeth, and he like Zacchary...we had sweet Communion with each other, and spent the Evening in concerting what Mesure had best be taken for promoting our dear Lord's Kingdom. It happens very providentially, that Mr. Tennent...intends breeding up gracious Youths...The place wherein the Young men study now is in contempt called the College. It is a log-house, about twenty feet long, and near as many broad and to me it seemed to resemble the Schools of the Old Prophets...All that can be said of most of our publick University is, they are all glorious WITHOUT. From this despised place seven or eight worthy Ministers of Jesus have lately been sent forth; more are almost ready to be sent, and a Foundation is now laying for Instruction of many others....
It is surprising how such Bodies of People so scattered abroad can be gathered at so short a Warning. I believe
at Neshamini there might be near a thousand horses, which the people do not sit on to hear the Sermon as in England, but tied them to the Hedges; and thereby much Disorder is prevented.
The Rev. George Whitefield, wrote to a friend in Philadelphia, July 15th, 1740:
"I rejoice you have been at Nashaminy. I can say of Mr. Tennent and his brethren as David did of Goliath's sword: 'None like them.' "
He returned to the church yard in April of 1740 and August of 1754 and the crowds were even larger! Again, it is safe to say that our Weir relatives living in the area at the time returned both times to hear Mr. Whitefield. (See Notes for John Weir Sr. for a sermon of Whitefield's)
Meanwhile, William Tennent retired in 1742 and died in 1746. In 1743 the Rev. Gilbert Tennent returned to his father's church to preach the ordination sermon for Charles Clinton Beatty, an alumni of the Log College. Mr. Beatty was the minister through the French and Indian War until he died of Yellow Fever on a trip to Barbados in 1772. He will always be remembered for his mission trips to the frontier settlements and Indian villages west of Pittsburgh, for his successful fundraising trips to England, and for uniting the New Side and Old Side parties of the church in 1758. Beatty (as Chaplain) accompanied Benjamin Franklin and five hundred men who traveled to western Pennsylvania to defend the frontier, after the burning of the Moravian missionaries at Gnadenhuetten, near Lehighton. In 1754 Samuel Weir became a Trustee of the church while the Rev. Beatty was the pastor.
Samuel and his family traveled about 10 miles each Sunday to church. Just as was noted in Londonderry, New Hampshire the parishioners often walked eight or ten miles with their shoes and stockings in their hands. When they reached a spring near the meetinghouse they washed their feet put on their shoes before entering the sanctuary. The sermons frequently lasted two hours. There was no Sunday School or Nursery. Music was an important part of the service but very different than our choirs of today. Neshaminy did not have a choir during Samuel's lifetime although instruments were used occasionally by Nathaniel Irwin. One or two men sat in the front of the pulpit facing the congregation and stood up to "set the tunes" for the congregation. Only after the Revolution was anything used besides Rouse's version of the Psalms of David. Nathaniel Irwin slowly and cautiously introduced Watts' hymns. Samuel was probably at church the day that one worshipper was so upset that he picked up his hat and walked out before the service was over. He stormed up the hill to the tavern in Warrington:
"When questioned by the men at the bar about his early departure, he fumed that they were doing nothing but singing Yankee Doodle songs and play house tunes, down at Neshaminy. He then ordered a "gill o'rum" to quench his disgust"
In 1774 a call was given to the Rev. Nathaniel Irwin, the person who wrote Samuel's will and was named a "friend" of Samuel Weir. Nathaniel was about eight or nine years younger than Samuel and was the muscular son of spinning wheel maker from Chester County. While at Princeton Nathaniel and James Madison founded the Whig Society. He was a very popular minister and the congregation grew rapidly. He played the violin with some skill and loved to organize social gatherings for the young people of the church at his home. He even entertained them with music and dancing. People admired the vegetables he grew at his large farm off Easton Road and most of all the 'chaise' that transported him around the area. He was the first one to own such a vehicle.
The Rev. Irwin was single when he was called to the church but married Martha Jamison in 1777. She was the daughter of the innkeeper whose nearby inn was a meeting place for Bucks County Revolutionary committees. Sadly, Nathaniel's son became an alcoholic and his wife an adulterer. When she died in 1806 he married again to a "discreet and sensible helpmeet." To supplement his income he prescribed medicines and wrote wills. He wrote the will for Samuel, Ann Weir (daughter of James), and probably many others in our family.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Besides the marriage celebration of Nathaniel Irwin to Martha Jamison that our Weirs may have attended in 1777, the BIGGEST news of the year concerned Washington's 11,000 troops who camped around the church! They crossed the Delaware River at New Hope and marched down York Road right by the tavern owned by Martha Jamison's father! They marched toward Philadelphia but returned a few days later to set up camp at the Crossroads. Samuel's sons John and James served in the Revolutionary war in 1776,1777, and 1778 but it is not clear where they were in 1777. Adam Kerr owned the tavern at the Crossroads and was delighted with his booming business. The church was used to shelter the sick and wounded and some were buried in the cemetery in unmarked graves. The tent city was half the size of Philadelphia and we can assume that our relatives sold or contributed food from their gardens and meat from their supplies for the hungry soldiers that very hot and humid August. It has been said that there were no Tories or Pacifists among the Scotch-Irish. However, the Tent City in their backyard most likely strained the residents' enthusiasm a bit!
Late though it was when the troops arrived at the Crossroads that Sunday evening one of the first orders issued according to Gen. Muhlenberg's Orderly Book was:
"As it is uncertain how long we shall remain in the Present Encampment the Soldiers are to fix Booths before their Tents to shelter them from the Heat. The Qr. Masters are to give directions Immediately to have Vaults [latrines] dug in proper and Convenient Places...." These "vaults" were to be camouflaged with "Bows and Bushes" in a single line to the rear of the camp. The men were reminded that at their previous encampment there had been complaints that the "Offensive smells" had become a "public nusence."
General Washington established his headquarters at the Moland house (John Moland was recently deceased), overlooking the Neshaminy Creek. Betsy Ross' flag was flown there for the first time, Count Pulaski was introduced to General Washington, and Lafayette assumed his command during those 11 days in August. At the end of the 11 days Washington called a Council of War in the reception room of the Moland house. Present at the council, in addition to the Commander-in-Chief, were Major Generals Greene, Stirling, Stephen, and Lafayette; and Brigadier Generals Maxwell, Knox, Wayne, Muhlenberg, Weedon, Woodford, Scott, and Conway. Lafayette, only nineteen years of age, was welcomed into the group for the first time.
In Davis' HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY he describes the Moland farm house. The description will give us an idea how the homes of Samuel and John compared with others in 1777:
"substantial stone dwelling...in good preservation.....
As when Washington occupied it, the first floor of the main building is divided into two rooms with the entry near the kitchen; the larger room being on the south (west) side and entered from the porch, the smaller, back. The latter is thought to have been used by Washington as an office, the larger a reception room. In each there was an open fireplace and then as now a door opened into the kitchen. There has been no change in the porches in sixty years, and similar ones may have been there 1777-8."
Others called it the "best finished house in the neighborhood" at the time of the Revolution. Most structures were built of logs and still consisted of one room downstairs and a loft above. As someone has exclaimed, "John Moland's stone house must have seemed palatial."
JOHN WEIR (d. 1840) AND MARY MCKINSTRY
When the war was over our Weir relatives suffered with everyone else from the depreciation of the paper money issued by Congress. Available land was scarce in Bucks County and neighbors and family members continued to move south by way of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and west to Indiana and Ohio. Samuel's son John married Mary McKinstry and Samuel's daughter Mary married Robert McKinstry, brother to Mary. John inherited land and built his home (Field of Praise) at the end of a long lane off of Upper State Road. Weirs' Corner is located at the intersection of Upper State Road and the Limekiln Pike. A Historical Marker marked Weirs' Corner in the late 1970's but has been removed.
In 1793 John was the collector of pew rents at Neshaminy Presbyterian Church and in October his younger sister Rebecca married John Roberts Simpson at the church. John and Rebecca had four children, all baptized at Neshaminy Presbyterian Church by the Reverend Nathaniel Irwin. Hannah Weir Simpson was born in Whitemarsh, Montgomery County on November 23, 1798 and baptized in February by the Rev. Nathaniel Irwin. Before Hannah turned five her mother, Rebecca Weir Simpson died. Although a marker has not been found, it is likely that she was buried at Neshaminy Presbyterian church with the sermon given by the Rev. Nathaniel Irwin. John Simpson then married Sarah Hare, a granddaughter of Benjamin Hare. The four Simpson children as well as the children of John Weir and Mary McKinstry attended the County Line schoolhouse when a teacher was available. The schoolhouse was just opposite the Simpson Homestead although in another county. Every Sunday afternoon visiting ministers held services at the schoolhouse and Hannah attended these meetings with her family and possibly grandparents and relatives.
When Hannah was a teenager her father took her on a trip in a wagon across the Allegheny Mountains to look at property in Ohio. Joseph Gilkeyson of Roxborough went along to help with the horses and other chores. When they stopped at Inns and Public Houses along the way, John Simpson had a problem he never anticipated. His daughter was too attractive and the young men who saw her asked John Simpson unending questions about his daughter. Annoyed with the excess attention that his daughter received, he told everyone that John Gilkeyson was her husband. That apparently solved the problem. In 1817 John's oldest daughter and husband moved to Bethel, Clermont County, Ohio. In the spring of 1819 John Simpson moved his family to Ohio. Many other families from the area had already settled in Cermont County, Ohio as well as in Rockingham County, Virginia.
John and Sarah corresponded with Simpson and Weir relatives back in Pennsylvania. It wasn't long before news came that Hannah Weir Simpson had married Jesse Root Grant and in 1822 they became the parents of future President Ulysses Simpson Grant!
In 1815 John Weir was elected an Elder for the church. His father Samuel had died in 1811 and was buried next to his mother in the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church cemetery. John's son Samuel, named after his grandfather, married the granddaughter of James Weir, one of the first Weirs in the Bucks County. Samuel inherited his grandfather's EIGHT DAY CLOCK and 10 pounds!
Nathaniel Irwin died in 1812 and was buried as he requested at the spot in the cemetery where the pulpit of the original church stood. Not surprising, there was a funeral procession of carriages extending one and one half miles from his home on Easton Road to the Neshaminy Presbyterian Church. I imagine that John and Mary McKinstry Weir's carriage was in that procession. Thomas McKinstry Weir ran a store at Weirs' Corner for a while before moving west with his family and settling in Indiana. John Weir died in 1840 and his land was divided between the remaining three brothers, James, Nathan, and Robert. John and Mary's daughters, Mary, Margaret, and Priscilla, never married. After their father's death they and their mother lived with James in the family home.
ROBERT MCKINSTRY WEIR (d.1874) AND JANE BRADY
Robert McKinstry Weir married Jane Brady abt 1843 and had four children. Occasionally relatives who had moved to Ohio would return to visit their relatives in Pennsylvania. Robert remembers the visit of a young officer, just graduated from West Point Military Academy in 1843, on his way home to visit his parents in Ohio. Samuel Weir was the grandfather of Robert and the great grandfather of the visitor who asked to visit Samuel's home as well as Simpson relatives in Bucks County. Ten years later the same relative visited relatives in the township. It was quite an honor to see this relative elected President of the United States after the Civil War!
Robert and his brother James lived near each other and the houses still stand! Jane's sister raised Thomas and Catherine, the younger children, after Jane died. John died at 26. According to the 1870 Census, James and Thomas hired out as farm laborers, James with the Lighman Hoover family and Thomas with the Nathan Wiser family.
In September of 1840 ten days of evangelistic services were held very near Weir's Corner in a wooded grove belonging to Jacob Cassel in Montgomery County. The meetings took place a few miles south of Pleasantville and not far from the Weir homes. The Rev. Charles H. Ewing, an evangelist for the Reformed Church, led the "camp meetings". When the weather made it impractical to meet outdoors the worshipers assembled in the barn of Frederick W. Hoover, a member of Boehm's Reformed Church in Blue Bell. There were a number of conversions during the ten days of meetings and a small steadfast group met at the Hoover home at the end of September to organize a new church. The Reformed denomination was chosen and the first service was held at the County Line School. There is no evidence that the Weirs attended these meetings but they later joined this church, probably because it was much closer to their homes.
JAMES BRADY WEIR (d. 1915) AND EMMA JANE DANNEHOWER
Within a year volunteers in the Reformed Church built a brick structure, fifty-one feet by sixty feet, on two-acres of land donated by John Dunlap on the Limekiln Pike. In March of 1874 James Weir, a grandson of John and Mary McKinstry Weir and oldest surviving son of Robert and Jane Brady Weir, married Emma Jane Dannehower at the little brick church. Emma Jane's parents were most likely members. James and Emma Jane attended the church and their children were baptized as infants in the church. In 1898 the present stone church was constructed and James Weir and Emma Jane Dannehower Weir are buried in the adjoining cemetery of the Pleasantville Reformed Church. In 1923 the children and grandchildren of Emma Jane and James Weir gathered at the home of Effie and Jesse Freas in Ambler to bid farewell to Ella May (Weir) and Edward Mulliken who moved to California. For many years the family met each year at the farms of members. Today the Weir family Reunions are held the first Sunday in August every year at the Pleasantville Church, now called the United Church of Christ.
Tijdbalk John Alexander Weir
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Voorouders (en nakomelingen) van John Alexander Weir
John Alexander Weir | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
± 1784 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Mary McKinstry | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
De getoonde gegevens hebben geen bronnen.
Historische gebeurtenissen
Dag van overlijden 24 april 1840
- De temperatuur op 24 april 1840 lag rond de 13,0 °C. De wind kwam overheersend uit het oost-zuid-oosten. Typering van het weer: helder windstil. Bron: KNMI
- De Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden werd in 1794-1795 door de Fransen veroverd onder leiding van bevelhebber Charles Pichegru (geholpen door de Nederlander Herman Willem Daendels); de verovering werd vergemakkelijkt door het dichtvriezen van de Waterlinie; Willem V moest op 18 januari 1795 uitwijken naar Engeland (en van daaruit in 1801 naar Duitsland); de patriotten namen de macht over van de aristocratische regenten en proclameerden de Bataafsche Republiek; op 16 mei 1795 werd het Haags Verdrag gesloten, waarmee ons land een vazalstaat werd van Frankrijk; in 3.1796 kwam er een Nationale Vergadering; in 1798 pleegde Daendels een staatsgreep, die de unitarissen aan de macht bracht; er kwam een nieuwe grondwet, die een Vertegenwoordigend Lichaam (met een Eerste en Tweede Kamer) instelde en als regering een Directoire; in 1799 sloeg Daendels bij Castricum een Brits-Russische invasie af; in 1801 kwam er een nieuwe grondwet; bij de Vrede van Amiens (1802) kreeg ons land van Engeland zijn koloniën terug (behalve Ceylon); na de grondwetswijziging van 1805 kwam er een raadpensionaris als eenhoofdig gezag, namelijk Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck (van 31 oktober 1761 tot 25 maart 1825).
- In het jaar 1840: Bron: Wikipedia
- Nederland had zo'n 2,9 miljoen inwoners.
- 22 januari » Britse kolonisten komen aan in Nieuw-Zeeland.
- 2 april » De Republiek Los Altos wordt geannexeerd door Guatemala.
- 6 mei » In het Verenigd Koninkrijk van Groot-Brittannië en Ierland verschijnen de eerste postzegels ter wereld.
- 7 oktober » Koning Willem I doet afstand van de troon.
- 20 oktober » Het gipsverband wordt uitgevonden door de Belgische chirurg Louis Seutin.
- 6 november » De Republiek van de Rio Grande geeft zich over aan Mexico.
Dezelfde geboorte/sterftedag
- 1827 » Israel Pickens (47), Amerikaans politicus
- 1836 » Firmin Didot (62), Frans letterontwerper
- 1848 » François Van Campenhout (69), Belgisch componist
- 1852 » Leopold van Baden (61), Groothertog van Baden
- 1854 » Gabriele Rossetti (71), Italiaans/Engels dichter en geleerde
- 1868 » Lamert Allard te Winkel (58), Nederlands taalkundige
Over de familienaam Weir
- Bekijk de informatie die Genealogie Online heeft over de familienaam Weir.
- Bekijk de informatie die Open Archieven heeft over Weir.
- Bekijk in het Wie (onder)zoekt wie? register wie de familienaam Weir (onder)zoekt.
De publicatie Clymer Weir Cox Genealogy is opgesteld door Donnagene.
Wilt u bij het overnemen van gegevens uit deze stamboom alstublieft een verwijzing naar de herkomst opnemen:
Donnagene, "Clymer Weir Cox Genealogy", database, Genealogie Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/clymer-weir-cox-genealogy/I43829.php : benaderd 24 september 2024), "John Alexander Weir (1752-1840)".
Donnagene, "Clymer Weir Cox Genealogy", database, Genealogie Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/clymer-weir-cox-genealogy/I43829.php : benaderd 24 september 2024), "John Alexander Weir (1752-1840)".