The following information was assembled from numerous sources and cannot be used directly as proof of Qualifying Service or Lineage.
It is considered a research aid and is intended to assist in locating sources that can be used as proof.
State of Service: PA
Qualifying Service: Patrtiotic Service
Author: Todd Francis Prough
Patriot Abraham Knerr, Sr. was born in 1717 in Zweibrucken, Germany. In 1741, at the age of 24, he and his wife Maria Eva, whom he married in 1740, immigrated to America onboard the ship Lydia and landed in Philadelphia. He soon settled in Lowhill Township, near Claussville in the Lehigh Valley of PA on 109 acres, which he secured on a warrant on August 16, 1748. He was a farmer by trade and he and his wife had ten children.
In early 1776, Abraham was elected as a member of the General Committee of Observation and Inspection from Lowhill Township in Northampton County. This committee acted as the local legislature after the colonials ransacked homes and destroyed property of the crown’s officials intimidating them to retire, leaving the county bereft of government. The committee defined duties like securing arms and ammunition to protect against antagonistic Indians. In addition, the committee was responsible for selecting representatives to the Provincial Convention where a new state government would be formed. During the May 30, 1776 meeting, Abraham was present during the selection of the six members who would attend the Convention, “for the express purpose of forming and establishing a new Government, under the authority of the people only, for the preservation of internal peace, virtue, and good order, as well as for the defence of their lives, liberties, and properties.”
He died on April 21, 1793 at the age of 79. He was interred at the Unionville Cemetery.
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Patriot biographies must be the original work of the author, and work submitted must not belong to another person or group, in observance with copyright law. Patriot biographies are to be written in complete sentences, follow the established rules of grammar, syntax and punctuation, be free of typographical errors, and follow a narrative format. The narrative should unfold in a logical manner (e.g. the narrative does not jump from time period to time period) or have repeated digressions, or tell the history of the patriot's line from the patriot ancestor to the author. The thinking here is that this is a patriot biography, not a lineage report or a kinship determination project or other report published in a genealogy journal. The biography should discuss the qualifying service (military, patriotic, civil) of the patriot ancestor, where the service was rendered, whether this was a specific state or Continental service, as well as significant events (as determined by the author) of the patriot's life. This is the entire purpose of a patriot's biography.
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Send your submission1, in a Microsoft Word compatible format, to patriotbios@sar.org for inclusion in this space 1Upon submission of a patriot biography, the patriot biography becomes the property of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, and may be edited to conform to the patriot biography submission standards.