The Schneider Family

Ancestors of Margaret Schneider Weisel

The Immigrant Ancestor and

the Revolutionary Soldier

Andreas Van Schneider

1739-1816

Margaret Jacobi

d. bef. 1830

            Andreas Van Schneider, or as he signed himself in America, Andreas Schneider, was born in 1739 in Zweybrucken, or Deux Ponts, Rhenish Bavaria.  He is said to have belonged to the nobility of that cosmopolitan town, but having taken part as a mere youth in an uprising against the government, was stripped of his nobility and property and forced to flee from t he country.  He sold himself to the captain of a sailing vessel bound for the port of Philadelphia where he arrived sometime in the year 1759.  He bound himself to a merchant in Philadelphia, by whom he was employed in the capacity of a farmer in the neighborhood of Germantown for some years, and that later his employer sold him sufficient stock and farming implements with which to embark in the farming business for himself.   In 1880 he was conveyed 140 acres on which he lived and died.

            He is said to have rendered active service in the defense of the rights of his adopted country during the Revolution and served as an officer under Washington when he crossed the Delaware to attack the Hessians on that memorable Christmas night.

            He married in 1765 Margaret Jacobi whose parents were also early settlers in upper Bucks county, and they were the parents of 11 children:

            i.          Frederick

            ii.          Elizabeth

            iii.         Catherine

            iv.         Andrew Jr.

            v.         Margaret Schneider m. John Weisel

            vi.         Magdalena

            vii.        Henry

            viii.       George

            ix.         John

            x.         Mary

            xi.         Susanna

            Andreas died on his Richland farm in about 1816.  Margaret died before 1830 in Bucks County, PA.

All information on the Weisel and Schneider families from an Ancestry.com website posted by Bonnie Weisel:  http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~bdweisel/