Peter Burgner, referred to as "The Swiss Emigrant," married Salome Burkhart in 1759 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. They had four children. Son, Jacob Burgner, was born in 1769 and died in 1844. Dates and places recorded in: The Burgner Family: 1734 - 1890. History Note 6, page 105b.

The Burgner Family History provides a rich source for learning about Peter Burgner and his descendants.

******************** Transcribed from Centennial History of Summit County *********************

About the year 1734 three brothers, David, Christopher and Peter Burgner, emigrated from the vicinity of Berne, Switzerland, and settled in Lancaster, County, Pennsylvania. It is probable that they sailed down the Rhine, embarked at Amsterdam, and landed at Philadelphia. Peter, the youngest, was then about fifteen years of age. They each brought from the Fatherland a large GErman bible, printed at Frankfort-on-the-Mayn in 1574., weighing fifteen pounds and costing about $50.00 a piece, in which they bean brief family records. Peter's bible has descended by inheritance to the writer of this sketch ‏[Jacob Burgner of Oberlin, Ohio]‏, four generations, and is still, 1888, in a good condition in a glass case in Birchard Library, Fremont, Ohio. The Burgner brothers were carpenters by trade and worked among farmers in Lancaster and adjoining counties, building houses and bank barns, after Swiss models, the roofs of houses being usually thatched with rye straw.

About twelve years later, 1746, two brothers and a sister, Jehu, Nathaniel and Salome Burkhart, came from Switzerland and settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The youngest, Salome, was about eleven years old. The Burkhart brothers were carpenters and often worked with the Burgners, their sister meanwhile serving among the Mennonite farmers as a maid of all work.

About the year 1759, date not found, Peter Burgner was married to Salome Burkhart, and established a permanent home in Lancaster County. He lived many years in a log house thatched with straw.

David and Christopher Burgner and Jehu and Nathaniel Burkhart moved southward into Maryland or Virginia, but some descendants of these Burgners returned, later, to Lancaster county. Their exact relationship to us has yet to be traced. In this same region lived Leonard Conrad, married to Auget Rettig, whose children in the order of their ages were: Catherine, Mary, Royal, Auget, Leonard, David, John, and James.

***** return to later

. . . and Jacob, after working some years as a carpenter with the Conrad brothers, at whose home he used to spend his rainy days and winter seasons, and where, after the death of Mr. Conrad, he made himself useful about the house and thus gained the good will of the widow and the affections of a daughter, was married to Mary Conrad about the year 1800, and lived in Cocalico Township, Lancaster County, about seventeen miles from the town of Lancaster, Pa.

The children of Jacob and Mary Burgner, born in this home, were Salome, December 23, 1801; Peter, May 25, 1803, and John ‏[our ancestor]‏, February 2, 1805.

Peter Burgner, the Swiss emigrant, died about the year 1784, at the age of sixty-five. his widow married a Mr. Hershey, but for some reason unknown to the writer, they parted, and she came to live in the family of of her son Jacob, to whom she entrusted her property. . . .

Finding that there was more demand for a blacksmith in his neighborhood than for a carpenter, Mr. Burgner set up a shop, and hired an experienced master from whom he soon picked up the trade so as to manage it himself. The work consisted mostly i repairing farming tools, setting wagon tires, making and repairing log and trace chains and shoeing horses. He hauled his supplies of coal and iron long distances in a heavy wagon over rough roads either from Valley Forge, on the Schuylkill River, or from McConnellstown, in Huntingdon County, Pa, a distance of more than one hundred miles. . .

In the Spring of 1806, having made sale of such property as he could not take with him, Mr. Burgner hired a Mr. Detwyler to move his family and goods to Franklin County in a large covered wagon drawn by a stout four-horse team. The distance was about one hundred miles.

*************

During the time of Mr. Burgner's residence in Franklin County, 1806 to 1812, his brother-in-law, John Bowman, ‏(married to Catharine Conrad)‏ moved to Ohio and settled in Stark County. From him Mr. Burgner got such such glowing accounts of the richness of the soil, the excellence of the timber and the low price of the land in Ohio, that he was tempted to move there himself. His family, however, and especially his aged mother, who expected to lean on her son during the rest of her declining years and to end her days in the society of the dear children she had helped to raise, and who knew that on account of her age and infirmity she could not go with the family, and must, in age of their going, be separated from them, never more to meet again in this world, resolutely opposed his moving. She plied Mr. Burgner with arguments, entreaties and tears, but all to no purpose. . . .

*************

Before completing the sale of his property, preparatory to moving, Mr. Burgner, at the request of his mother, kindly took her and her goods to the home of her daughter, Mary Spickler, in Maryland. Her she died about six years later, June 22, 1818, at the age of 83 years, 10 months and 12 days, as learned from a letter written in German by Frederick Spickler to Jacob Burgner, July 26, 1818, postmarked Hagerstown, Md. . .

‏[herein Jacob Burgner relates the long journey from Franklin County to Ohio]‏.

having crossed the Alleghanies, the Laurel and Chestnut Ridges, and the intervening valleys without loss of life or limb, cheered by their pillar of cloud--the white covered wagon--by day, and their pillar of fire--the cheerful camp fire where they cooked their evening meals--by night, they arrived safely at Canton, Ohio, on the 4th day of July, 1812, the 36th anniversary of American Independence.

‏[herein Jacob Burgner relates the trials of life in Franklin County, Ohio]‏.

During his second winter in Ohio, the woodchoppers again added a few stumpy acres to his clearing, but it was at such a sacrifice of time and muscle and provisions, that Mr. Burgner at last became discouraged. He found that he was "paying too dear for the whistle." He could not maintain his family, clear his land and make his last payment by raising crops on it, and he feared that if he remained he might lose all his property. Hence , finding a good opportunity as he supposed, he sold his land--part cash and part time--and about the 7th of April 1814, entered 320 aces of Government land in Franklin township, Stark ‏(now Summit)‏ County, O., a short distance north of the village of Clinton, at $1.25 per acre ‏($400.)‏ The land is described as follows: The south-west quarter of Section 17, Town 2, Range 19. . . .

************************************** End of Transcription **************************************

Dates and places recorded in: The Burgner Family: 1734 - 1890. History Note 6, page 105b.