Eisenhart Family Groups

Andreas Eisenhart II

Andreas Eisenhart II was the first of the three 1750s immigrants to arrive in the Colony of Pennsylvania. He was born in the small village of Dachtel in the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) District of Württemberg on September 22, 1715. He was the son of Balthasar and Anna Maria Konig Eisenhart, and DNA analysis indicates that he was the direct descendant of Matthyss Ysenhart, born c. 1500, of Dachtel.

Andreas married Anna Margaretha Härter of Deckenpfronn on October 10, 1738, and they began their married life in Dachtel. They grieved the loss of their first two infant sons, Georg Balthas and Georg Simon I born in 1739 and 1740. Five more children were born to them prior to their emigration, Andreas III (1742), Joseph (1744), Jacob (1745), and Catharina (1747) and Georg Simon II (1749). They left Dachtel in the spring of 1751 for the long journey to America, traveling by barge up the Rhine River, and obtaining passage to the Port of Philadelphia aboard the ship Phoenix by way of Rotterdam and Portsmouth. On the voyage, their youngest child Georg Simon II became ill and died on August 16, 1751. He was buried at sea.

The family arrived in Philadelphia on September 15, 1751, where Andreas pledged allegiance to his new country before disembarking from the ship. The family remained in the Germantown section of Philadelphia throughout the fall and winter, and it was there that Anna Margaretha gave birth to another son on February 6, 1752. He was christened Georg Simon, the third son to bear that name, and was the first Eisenhart child born in Pennsylvania. Some time after the birth the family headed for the Lehigh Valley, then located in Northampton Co. Because of continuing Indian unrest, this area was still unstable and dangerous. Rather than settling his family on a homestead, Andreas made the decision to live within the protection of the Moravian community at Emmaus. His occupation in the compound was given as shoemaker, although he purchased several large tracts land in Macungie Twp with the goal of becoming a farmer.

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The family expanded to include another daughter, Margaretha born in 1756, but the rigors of childbearing and the hardships of life had apparently taken a toll and Anna Margaretha died on February 14, 1760 at age 41. Within a few months, Andreas married Eva Knauss Fahs Lerch, who herself was twice widowed. This marriage produced a daughter Anna Johanna born in 1761. Eva passed away in February 1763, and Andreas married another widow from the Moravian community, Dorothea Dewees Volck, in 1764. There were no children from this marriage and Dorothea survived him.

Although his sons had taken possession of the Eisenhart land in Macungie Twp and were making lives for themselves outside the Moravian compound, Andreas himself remained in the community.

Andreas died on March 14, 1770. He is buried in the Old Moravian Burial Ground in Emmaus, as are his wives Anna Margaretha and Eva.

The sons of Andreas, Andreas III, Joseph, Jacob and George Simon (later called Samuel) began to raise families in the Lehigh Valley and also purchased land in far western Pennsylvania, possibly realizing that the influx of settlers had begun to limit the available land in Eastern Pennsylvania. However, with the outbreak of the American Revolution, everything changed. Jacob Eisenhart enlisted in the regular Continental Army in the Northampton Co. Pennsylvania regiment. He was listed as Missing In Action after the Battle of Long Island in August 1776. There are no records indicating that he survived the war and returned to his family, and his brothers subsequently sold their Western Pennsylvania land holdings. The surviving brothers joined the Northampton Co. Militia, the home guard whose goal was to protect local communities. Joseph Eisenhart died suddenly in 1784, leaving only Andreas III and Georg Simon/Samuel to carry on the Eisenhart presence in the Lehigh Valley. Nevertheless, the large family groups descended from these two men form one of the largest Eisenhart branches on the family tree, the Lehigh Eisenhart family group. This group can be further subdivided into three large subgroups: The Allentown/Macungie Eisenhard and Eisenhart Families, The Northumberland County Eisenhart Families, The Spring Valley Eisenhart Families.

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