Eisenhart Family Groups

Allentown/Macungie Eisenhards/Eisenharts

As described earlier, only two of the sons of Andreas II The Immigrant are known to have been the ancestors of the large Eisenhart and Eisenhard family groups who were centered in the townships of Lehigh County.

Andreas Eisenhart III was born in 1742 in Württemberg, probably in the town of Deckenpfronn, where his parents lived prior to their emigration. Although he joined his father in the Moravian compound at Emmaus, he and his brothers were anxious to leave the somewhat restrictive Moravian community and begin life as farmers on their own property. However, they did not make the final break until after their father’s death in 1770. Andreas married the daughter of a neighbor, Elisabetha Jarrett, in 1772 at the Zion Lehigh Lutheran Church in Alburtis, Macungie Twp. The couple had 16 children before Elisabeth’s death in 1798. Sons Johannes “John”, Jacob, Daniel, Andreas IV, Heinrich “Henry” and George were all themselves the fathers of large families, and their descendants form the bulk of the large number of Eisenhard and Eisenhart families known on this web site as the Allentown/Macungie Eisenharts and Eisenharts.

Andreas III inherited the bulk of his father’s land and property, and donated land in what would become the community of East Texas, Lower Macungie Twp, for a schoolhouse for the area. Almost immediately after Elizabeth’s death, Andreas III married a woman named Joanna. Little is known about him after that time, not even where he is buried. There has been speculation that his numerous children resented their new, and presumably younger, stepmother, and the family solidarity never recovered.

There were no known children from this second marriage, however. Andreas died in 1817 in Emmaus.

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Andreas Eisenhart III’s youngest brother George Simon, who later went by the name Samuel, was the first Eisenhart child to be born in Pennsylvania. He was born in the Germantown section of Philadelphia on February 6, 1752, just a few months after the arrival of the family. He married Catharina Jarrett, the younger sister or half sister of his sister-in-law Elisabetha Jarrett, about 1774. This couple had 11 children, which included five surviving sons, Jacob, Johannes “John”, George L. Samuel, Andreas “Andrew” and Heinrich “Henry.” Son John left the area in 1802 to form the Northumberland County Eisenhart family, Andreas eventually relocated to Carbon Co., and Henry to Montgomery Co.; however, all the sons eventually had descendants living in both Allentown and the surrounding Lehigh Co. townships.

George Simon/Samuel was a farmer in the Alburtis, Lower Macungie Twp. area. According to a family story passed down over the generations, he collapsed in the fields during the harvest on September 14, 1818. When he didn’t appear for the midday meal, the family found him deceased, or nearly so, and attributed this to “sunstroke”, although his exact cause of death will never be known for sure. He is buried in the Zion Lehigh Church Cemetery in Alburtis. His wife Catharine survived him by 5 years and is buried beside him.

Additional photographs

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