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between teacher and pupil during the remaining years
of Weiss's lifetime. In a historical manuscript written
by Rev. Baltzer Hoffman, 1750, compiled by Christopher
Hoffman, 1771, we find that our pilgrim fathers
on the eve of their departure for America appointed
Weiss as a kind of leader or teacher in spiritual
things for adults, as well as catechist for the young,
there and on shipboard, which appointment he accepted
and carried out; and that about a year and a quarter
after arriving in America (December 9, 1735) Weiss
was formally appointed the first Schwenkfelder minister
of the Gospel and catechist in this country, and that
he officiated in that capacity in an acceptable manner
up to the time of his death, which occurred on his farm
on Skippack Creek, in Lower Salford, Montgomery
County, on the 11th of March, 1740, in the fifty-third
year of his age. His body lays buried at the meeting-house
near by, where a handsome stone has been
erected to his memory. Rev. B. Hoffman writes that
Weiss was married in 1715 to Anna Meschter, of Langenneudorf;
that they had one child, a son, who died
when about a year old; that he also had a brother and
a sister who both died young in Silesia; that shortly
after their arrival in America he also lost his wife by
death, and had her buried in the "Pilgrims' Cemetery"
at Philadelphia. Thus Weiss himself was the
only remnant left of the family this side of the grave,
and having the spiritual welfare of his disorganized
and scattered flock at heart, he labored for them in
season and out of season; but in time he became considerably
disappointed in seeing no better results, and
finding so much lukewarmness and worldly-mindedness,
etc., that during a spell of sickness which befell
him in 1739, he was on the point of relinquishing his