| Notes |
- From a Leap Family Book:
JOHN WESLEY Leap 1735 -1845: "John was born on the river Rhine, near Mannheim Germany, He was one of fifteen children. In his early teens he began his education to become a Catholic priest. During his education he secretly read the Holy Bible which was a rare thing in that country. However, when he was 24, he renounced the Catholic faith and was conditionally exiled from his mother country, either having to be burned at the stake, die beneath the guillotine or leave the country.
Traveling by night and hiding by day, the tall lanky youth left the country we know as Germany now to make his way though Holland, crossed the English Channel into England. In April 1757, in Plymouth Harbor he boarded a ship laden with glass and so was bound for America as a stowaway. When he was discovered hidden in one of the small boats on the Vessel, the captain immediately issued orders for Leap to be thrown overboard. Other officers objected so the angry captain allowed him to work his passage doing odd jobs. John arrived in Baltimore, Maryland in June 1757. John settled in what is now eastern Virginia and became acquainted with the family and parents of George Rogers Clark, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe, and other prominent families. He became the foreman of a large tobacco plantation. He was a skilled musician and played the violin for some of the social gatherings.
John joined the American Army in September 1775 as a private in the 4th Regiment of the Pennsylvania Militia, and later was made a Quartermaster General under General George Washington. He spent the winter with Washington at Valley Forge and was one of the parties that crossed the Delaware. Able to speak seven Languages, it was Leap, who on Christmas Eve, "tipped" the general regarding the Hessians at Germantown, New Jersey, for he knew their customs and knew they would spend Christmas Eve drinking and dancing. Washington acted on this advice and swooping down on them, captured that position and many prisoners. John served in companies under Captain John Jameson and Captain Arch McIlroy and was given his honorable discharge at Morristown, New Jersey at the end of the war. During his service, John was at the siege of Boston and witnessed the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.
John was fond of telling the story that while in the Army he headed a detail, which brought back a stack of hay from an Old Dutch farmer. Finding six big rounds of cheese in the hay where they had been left to ripen, the soldiers took the booty back to camp where their comrades quickly devoured it. The next morning the irate Dutchman made complaints to Washington, who ordered Leap to pay for the cheese.
In 1768, John married Margaret Crow and moved to Mannheim Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In 1775, the family was living in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. After the death of his first wife in 1799, John and his children moved to Lancaster County where he married a French lady, Sarah Deleow. Soon after, his new wife and children moved to Greene County. In 1808 he went to Indiana to prepare a place for his family to settle in what is now known as Switzerland county, Indian. In about 1816 John Leap Sr. moved with his second wife and younger children to the new land. In 1832 the family moved again to Boone County, Indiana to live on a farm near Fayette.
The older children of John Wesley Leap moved to Virginia. Gabriel and John Wesley II reached Monongalia County just after 1810 and are listed on the 1820 census there. By 1840, part of Monongalia County became Tyler County, and by 1846 part of Tyler County became Wetzel, Wood and Wirt Counties. Both Brothers and their children are listed in the 1840 and 1850 census.
Discipline had been severe in his father's household, and John Leap would make no changes for the freer life in his new country. In 1812, in Moongalia County, Virginia, his son, Gabriel Leap, went to court to gain gentler treatment for the children. John was always close to George Rogers Clark and as a settler in southern Indiana, he makes two or three trips down the river by horseback to visit his old friend.
On his 100th birthday, his wife found him lying in the garden between two rows of cabbages shouting "Oh Mother, I was never so happy in my life. I want to be baptized in the Baptist Church right now." So insistent were his demands that a messenger was dispatched and the Reverend David Keaney came by horseback to baptize John in the little stream of White Lick almost within a stone's throw of the place where his remains now peacefully repose. The next year, John walked the twenty miles to the meeting of the General Assembly at Indianapolis to address them on a subject in which he was interested. Later he made the same trip several times to meetings of old soldiers, again on foot.
John Leap was 110 years, 5 months and 1 day old when he died on 16 September 1845. (Another source says he was 112 years old at his death.)
On 4 July 1898 the citizens of Boone County erected a large gray granite marker to the memory of John Wesley Leap."
Source: Jacob Leisle, author of a book on the Leap family.
- "John Wesley Leap was born on 15 Apr 1735. He died on 16 Sep 1845. From Revolutionary War Pension Claim: Enlisted Springfield Township, Bucks County, PA. 4th Regiment PA Militia." - Find A Grave
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1733 - 1845 (112 years)
CATHERINE N. LEAP, b. 1784, Greene, Greene, Pennsylvania, United States 
