George Ulrich Bruner ²

   Another name for George was Ulrich Bruner.^{1 3}

  General Notes:

Ulrich is sometimes referred to as Ulrick or as George Ulrich in various documents. Two entries in the IGS files, available from the LDS, Batch #860 2105, Sheets No. 21 and 43 are examples of the difference in spellings of Ulrich.

Ulrich Bruner arrived in America Feb 7, 1739 at Philadelphia on ship "Jamaica Galley". Settled in Cocalico District, Lancaster, Pennsylvania north of town of Ephrata. Other Bruner's in the area were Jacob, Wolf Heinrich and George Michael. He was in Bedford County at age 52. Later in 1775 Tax List of Somerset County. Purchased 30 acres on Feb 17, 1750 in Cocalico District and 20 more acres on Mar 26 the same year. He is found in Chester, Pennsylvania in the year 1774 and Bedford County, Pennsylvania in 1775. Purchased 50 acres and sawmill on Feb 11, 1795 in Jessamine County, Kentucky. Belonged to Muddy Creek Reformed Church Pennsylvania. Children christened by Rev. John Waldschmidt. This info taken from chart done by C. Butterfield, 482 Virginia Ave. Taylorville, Illinois. dated Jan 1979 and sent by Ralph Arnspiger, P.O. Box 6046, Florence, Kentucky.

(Faust & Brumbaugh, Genealogy Publishing, Baltimore 1976, states that Ulrich arrived in America May 5, 1743. I have no data to prove or disprove either arrival date.)

It appears that Ulrich arrived in America in the company of Hans Jacob Bruner (The Trumpeter of Basserstorf). At the time of his arrival he was a tailor. Info from article printed in 1977 by the Historical Society of Somerset, Pennsylvania. Ulrich was a temporary resident in Chester, Pennsylvania in 1774 and appears on the tax list of Bedford (now Somerset), Pennsylvania in 1775. He settled in an area that was named Quemahoning Township. About 1784 or 1785, Ulrich employed Harmon Husband, who was a surveyor, to plot a town of thirty-six blocks containing 144 lots. Ulrich called the town Milford, but which was generally called Bruner's Town or Brunnerstown. This plot was enlarged by Adam Schneider (married to Catherine) and later became the northern part of the present town of Somerset, Pennsylvania. Ulrich, George and Henry Bruner held and sold over 4000 acres of land during the years 1774 to 1798.

Parts of this info taken from LDS Film #996,806 "Taufen Bassersdorf"

Ulrich's sons, George and Henry, preceded him to the Somerset area. This is shown from tax lists of 1772, 1773, 1774. In 1776 Ulrich and Henry are shown but not George as he had joined the Revolutionary Army. In 1777, Ulrich Bruner and his sons George and Henry were among those who signed a pledge to pay two shillings each for wolf scalps, this being to secure better protection for their herds of animals against marauders of the forests. The country was still wild and the Indians still a threat to the safety of the settlers. In 1772, when George and Henry Bruner were first listed as settlers, the male population of Brothersvalley township, which later became Somerset, was only 133, 93 married and 40 single. Referring to the Bruners as landowners, we find that three (Ulrich, George and Henry) of them held and sold during the years 1774 to 1798 well over 4000 acres of land. Also the younger brother, Jacob, and a son-in-law, Paul Ernsperger (married to Maria) owned large tracts in their own right. Most of this land was in or near the present town of Somerset and in Milford Township, Jacob sold his tract of three hundred acres to Jacob Morningstar in 1784, and Paul sold his farm through his agent, Henry Bruner in 1795. This last tract was on the lower Middle Creek, where it empties into the Casselman River, and it was sold to George Friend.

One of the last properties that Ulrich Bruner was to sell was the property in Baltimore, Maryland, which he sold April 2, 1793 and the deed which is preserved in the hall of records, Annapolis, Maryland, was signed by Ulrich in German, as always, and witnessed before James Wells, Justice of the Peace, in Somerset, Pennsylvania, by John Bruner (George's oldest son, who was the only Bruner to remain behind when the others migrated to Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana) grandson also in German, and John Lynch .
----------------------------------------
The following is an excerpt from Samuel M. Duncan's 1869 "Moravian Families":

The Infantile period of all countries exhibits, in a greater or lesser degree, a phase of barbarism. The planting of colonies, or the formation of social establishments in new counties, is ever attended with circumstances unfavorable to refinement. The force with which these circumstances act will be increased or diminished in proportion to the remoteness or proximity of such new establishments to Older societies in which the arts and sciences are cultivated, and to the facility of communication between them.

Man is at all times the creature of circumstances. Cut off from intercourse with his fellow men and divested of the conveniences of life, he will readily relapse into a state of nature. Placed in contiguity with the barbarous and vicious, his manners become rude, his morals perverted. Brought into collision with the sanguinary and revengeful, his own conduct will eventually be distinguished by bloody and vindictive deeds. Such was really the situation of those who made the first settlements on Jessamine Creek, in the western portion of what is now Jessamine, in the years 1788, '89, and '90. And when it is considered that they were mostly men from the humbler walks of life, with a love of liberty bordering on the extreme, their more enlightened descendents can but feel proud of such an ancestry, and any dereliction from propriety must readily be pardoned. Generally speaking, the early settlers were men in indigent circumstances, unable to purchase land in the older states from whence they came, and unwittingly any longer to remain tenants of others; they were prompted to migrate by a laudable ambition to acquire homes from which they would not be liable to expulsion at the whim or caprice of some haughty landing. Upon the attainment of this object, they were generally content and made but feeble exertions to acquire more land than that to which they obtained title by virtue of their settlements. Some few though, availed themselves of the right of preemption, and becoming possessed of the more desirable portions of the land on Jessamine Creek, added considerably to the individual wealth of their descendants.

Jessamine Creek winds its course through a soil of wonderful fertility, and then narrowing to a modest width, glides through meadows and woodland. Hard beaten roads intersect each other over a fine landscape of rare beauty, at times winding past neat and pretty farm houses and spacious barns; and at others lost seemingly in the dark woods of oak and cedar which cast their shadows over the way. The writer remembers that one pleasant September morning in 1869, he set out on foot to visit the mouth of Jessamine Creek. After following the course of the creek, it empties into the Kentucky River. The road was exceedingly rough and tortuous and led along the tops of high banks and precipices, through which the creek tumbled and foamed over a rocky bed to the river. The scenery all along Jessamine Creek is strikingly beautiful. The hills and cliffs are admirably set off by a growth of cedar trees. The stream, where it empties into the Kentucky River, runs smoothly over a solid bed of limestone rock of great depth. As you stand on it's border, with the rocks rising perpendicular before you, watching the silvery tide pouring itself as it were from the blue bosom of the sky into the depths below, the scene is irresistibly charming.

A century ago the buffalo and the deer sported upon the banks of Jessamine Creek, and amid the entangled cane brakes prowled the bear and the panther, Hardy adventures, the descendents of German Protestants from Europe, who had first settled at Hagerstown, Maryland, and in western Pennsylvania, had removed to the Western Reserve in the territory of Ohio. In 1789 and 1793, through the efforts of Dr. Peter Trisler, many of these Protestant Germans began to build their log cabins beneath the romantic cliffs of this portion of Jessamine County.

From the most reliable records, Rev. Jacob Rhorer, husband of Elizabeth Bruner, who is the fourth child of Ulrich and Veronica Bruner, was the founder of the first Moravian Church in Jessamine, organized on Jessamine Creek in 1798, and used as such by the Rhorer family up to a few years before the Civil War. Following are the names of early settlers who were of German parentage and belonged to the Moravian or United Brethren Church: Arnspigers, Allcorns, Cormans, Bowmans, Bruners, Earthenhouses, Easleys, Funk, Frazers, Grows, Gillmans, Goforths, Hiffners, Howsers, Harboughs, Horines, Ritters, Rices, Masners, Zikes, Ketrons, Waggamans, Warmsleys, Overstreets, Quests, Yosts, Hoovers, Trislers, Turks, Turpins, Shreves, Veatches, VanTrees, Naves, Cogars, Cooleys, Cawbys, and the Schmidts or Smiths.
----------------------------------------
An entry in the Ancestry Files of the IGS Film #1903901 shows a marriage of Ulrich Bruner to Elizabeth Weaver in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1788. I have no evidence that this is the same Ulrich married to Fronica Egli. More research is needed, as there has been no prior mention of a second marriage after the death of Fronica, which is believed to have occurred between 1789-1798.
----------------------------------------

George married Fronica Egle about 1745 in Cocalico Township, Lancaster, PA.¹ (Fronica Egle was born in 1722 in Canton De Zurich, Zurich, SWITZERLAND ^{1 3} and died between 1789 and 1793 in Somerset, PA ³.)