A son of Cornelius and Maria Agenta (Bechtel) Weygandt was born in Germantown in 1744, Captain Jacob Weygandt. He was educated in Germantown, Pennsylvania, then came with his family to a "plantation" near Bethlehem, the present fashionable Fountain Hill section. He early espoused the Revolutionary cause, and was a member of the Northampton County Associators, one of the first patriot military organizations. He suffered capture at Fort Washington in November 1776, later regaining his liberty, and was one of the organizers of a company of militia, of which he was commissioned captain. Subsequent to the Revolution he settled in Easton and became the founder of the Easton German Patriot and Countryman, published from 1805 to 1813. He served as one of the first burgesses of the borough of Easton, filled a seat in the Pennsylvania Legislature from 1808 to 1811, and in 1809 was a presidential elector. He was a vestryman of old St. John's Lutheran Church. He married, in 1767, Catherine, daughter of John Nowland, another Northampton pioneer, and their eldest son, Cornelius Nowland Weygandt, born in 1771, was associated with his father and brother, Jacob, Jr., the latter founder of the Easton Argus, the earliest of Easton's English newspapers, first issued February 13, 1827.