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Family
Marriage: Children:
  1. Isaac Wiseman: Birth: 18 AUG 1738 in Berks, Pennsylvania, United States. Death: 3 MAY 1818 in Monroe, Virginia, United States

  2. George Wiseman: Birth: 1740 in Berks, Pennsylvania, United States. Death: 1816 in Harrison, Virginia, United States

  3. Jacob Wiseman: Birth: 12 JAN 1745 in Berks, Pennsylvania, United States. Death: 1807 in Jersey Settlement, Rowan, (now Davidson), North Carolina, USA

  4. William Wiseman: Birth: ABT 1747 in of Berks, Pennsylvania, USA. Death: 17 SEP 1805

  5. Jonathan Wiseman: Birth: ABT 1749 in of Berks, Pennsylvania, USA. Death: BEF 1779

  6. Thomas Wiseman: Birth: ABT 1751 in of Berks, Pennsylvania, USA.

  7. Mary Wiseman: Birth: 1753 in Berks, Pennsylvania, United States.

  8. Rachel Wiseman: Birth: ABT 1755 in Berks, Pennsylvania, United States.

  9. James Wiseman: Birth: JAN 1759 in Berks, Pennsylvania, United States. Death: 1832 in Miami, Indiana, United States

  10. William Wiseman: Birth: ABT 1761 in Berks, Pennsylvania, United States.


Notes
a. Note:   . Compiled by Boyd W Venable of 2312 Branner Avenue, Jefferson City, Tennessee, 3760, a Wiseman descendant. See notes for father, Thomas Wiseman, for additional information. We first hear about Isaac Wiseman Sr on March 3, 1744. His name is one of those in a list of 42 persons renewing a petition for formation of Amity Township around Oley, Pennsylvania. Amity was the first township to be organized in that part of Philadelphia County, later formed into Berks County. Isaac Sr must have had more persons in his immediate family than just Isaac Jr, but I have found no record of it. (see notes for father, Thomas Wiseman, for further information of Isaac Sr's family) Berks County is in the foothills of a broad belt of flatland farming country which includes the well known Amish farms around Lancaster in southeast Pennsylvania. Berks lies east of the Blue mountains and about 60 miles northwest of Philadelphia on the Schuylkill River. Now it is dominated by the city of Reading , but it was rural outland on the edge of Indian country in the eighteenth century. In fact there was an Indian massacre in Berks County as late as 178. Six people were killed, and one family was carried away. Why did the Wisemans settle in upcountry Pennsylvania? Encyclopedia Britannica has this explanation: William Penn wrote his “Frame of Government” for Pennsylvania in 1680, granting the people more powers and privileges than the settlers had in any other colony, including absolute religious freedom and the right of all Christian property holders to be eligible voters and officehelders. Then in 1683 Penn concluded his “Great Treaty” with the Indians which prevented Indian hostilities during his lifetime. In addition, Penn advertised all over England, Germany, and elsewhere in western Europe for settlers. To this colony then, came the oppressed and persecuted of all lands for refuge. First the Quakers from Wales and elsewhere, then German Mennonites and Lutherans, Moravians (from Bohemia, now part of Czechoslovakia) and finally the Scotch-Irish, Presbyterian in religion, an active, restless pioneer element, arrived and took up land on the frontier. Because of their difference from the Quakers and Germans in temperament, and because of the peculiar frontier problems which they faced, they formed an opposition to the ruling element all through the 18th Century William Penn's agreement with the Indians lasted through his own lifetime, but the truce was broken afterward. For example, in the Berks County Indian massacre of August 8, 1781, David Emerick was killed and his family captured. Henry Bickle was killed on the Mertz farm, and four members of the Stroh family were also killed, including Benjamin Stroh's daughter Maria. William Penn died in 1718. There were Wisemans in America before Isaac Sr arrived. For example, there was Abram (Abraham?) Wiseman, who acquired 172 acres of the 40 000 acre VanMeter grant between Opequon creek and the Shenandoah Valley of northern Virginia in 1734, four years before our Isaac Jr was born. That area, west of the Blue Ridge, was the wild west of the time. He acquired it from Joist Hite, a land promoter from Pennsylvania, so I reason that the Abram Wiseman family was one of those Pennsylvania farmer families that Hite brought down to Virginia to fulfill his contract obligation to bring in a certain number of settlers to the grant. It has been a common practice among immigrants to this country for earlier settlers to establish themselves and then to send back to the old country for other relatives, and I think it likely our Isaac came to this country in that way, to join other family members as farmer and sheep raiser along the eastern flank of the Blue Mountains in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Sheep raising was an important industry in England at the time, and would have been ideal for the fronter in the Colonies, providing food, clothing and a cash crop. By law, wool was supposed to be exported to England from the colonies to be made into woolen cloth. That was part of the Colonial system. Another cash crop in those days was whiskey, the art of making which was well known to immigrants from England. Whiskey was a high-value product that could be made on the frontier and then transported to market much more readily than would have been the case for the corn or other grain from which it was made. Another part of the Colonial political system was the custom of awarding vast tracts of land to political favorites, to be sold to applicant farmers either on a quit-rent (tax) or fee basis, depending on which colony. The Van Meter Grant must have been such an award, as would have been the Fairfax Grant that George Washington surveyed for Lord Fairfax. Mineral rights were usually reserved to the King or the original proprietor. In the old country, farmers seldom were able to acquire any real title to the land they worked because of the Plantation system of land leasing. The possibility of acquiring title to new land, even with the quit-rent cloud on the title, was one of the incentives for emigration from the old country to the new. In addition to the Wisemans I have described so far, there were some other Wisemans who lived on or near Tidewater in Virginia from the early 1600s. I think they were more likely to have been English than Scotch-Irish, descendants of the 1639 English immigrant Robert Wiseman, Henrico County, Virginia, or of 1652 English immigrant John Wiseman, or of the rebel Richard Wiseman transported to America in 1685 as an alternative to hanging in England. Then there were the Englishmen Richard and Thomas Wiseman in 1621, who were partners with others in a land promotion for 200 persons on the Nansemond River west of Norfolk. Almost all of those 200 settlers were killed by Indians in 1622. That massacre ended efforts in Virginia to get along with the Indians. It was open season between the races there from that time on. These English Wisemans were slave-holders, and are not likely to be related to us. In later years another Wiseman family appeared on the scene. They were from Germany, some by way of New Orleans, and also not likely to be related to us. An item from the Pennsylvania Gazette of April 2, 1752 reads as follows: “Cornelius Smith, Irishman, age about 25, has escaped from the constable of Amity Twp, Philadelphia County. Reward will be paid by Isaac Wiseman and Samuel Seely.” In those days it was common for those who wished to emigrate to America but didn't have money for passage to indenture or bond themselves for services for a period of years (usually 4 to 7) to pay for the passage. The ship captain could sell those contracts at the destination to get his money for the passage. The indentured bond servant was then legally bound to his new master in an arrangement similar to slavery, for the period specified in the contract. At the end of the term of indenture the bond servant was legally free and had a right by law to claim from his former master “freedom dues”, consisting of money, tools, clothing and food. The former bond servant was then able to take up land on his own. If he skipped out. on his indenture before completing his term, then the holder was out the price of his passage. No doubt Cornelius Smith jumped his bond with Seely and Wiseman. This news item indicates that the Wiseman family were prosperous enough to afford to buy an indenture contract, which would have entailed a substantial outlay. The Isaac Wiseman of this news item would have been Isaac Wiseman Sr, because Isaac Jr would have been but 14 years old in 1752, too young to be holding an indenture contract. Based on the tax roll of 1759, Isaac Sr owned a tract of land near Oley at that time, and Isaac Jr owned a smaller one. To put the times in perspective, Britain was engaged in European wars when Isaac Wiseman Sr first recorded in Pennsylvania. For example, the “War of Jenkins Ear” with Spain from 1739 to 1748 and during the same period “The War of the Austrian Succession 1740 to 1748. Then there was the Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland in 1746 which resulted in a great migration of rebel Scottish highlanders to the Upper Cape Fear Valley of North Carolina. Also, the Seven Years War between England and France from 1756 to 1763, and its American phase, the French and Indian War. Elsewhere in the world, Czarist Russia completed their first survey of Arctic Siberia, and total population of the world reached 700 million. The largest city in British America was the port city of Philadelphia, with a population in 1760 of 23,750 persons; slightly larger than the present-day population of Morristown, Tennessee. The largest town in the interior was Lancaster, Pennsylvania, at. 5,000 to 6,000, or about the same size as Jefferson City, Tennessee is now. Most of the populated areas were rural, with a total of 1,695,000 persons in the 13 original colonies. I am unable to say with certainty when or where Isaac Sr died or how old he was then. He was a shadowy figure of whom I have found only the two items of documentation previously mentioned. I think we can assume that Isaac Jr would not have left Berks County as long as his father and mother were living, and since Isaac Jr seems to have left by 1777, it is reasonable to guess 1776 as Isaac Sr's year of death; he would have lived 86 years if born in 1690 and died in 1776. The American Revolution had been going on for two years, British troops were occupying Philadelphia, and Isaac Jr would then have been-38 years old. The other known member of Generation 1 was Samuel Davis, father-in-law of Isaac Jr., of whom I know only that his family was probably the one whose members are buried in St John's cemetery, Gibraltar, Berks County, PA. It is appropriate to mention here that there were two other, earlier, Wiseman families in Pennsylvania prior to 1738. One was the Jacob Wiseman family who are said to have been in Cumberland County in 1690 and whose second generation seems to have migrated to Rowan County, North Carolina, prior to 1766. The other was the Abram Wiseman family who settled in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in 1734. These families could have been kin to Isaac Wiseman Sr and Jr. but I have found no documentation to date to support that possibility.
Note:   The following information is taken from “The Wisemans” 2nd Edition, 1992


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