>From The Heritage of Rowan County North Carolina Contributed by Martha Withers Agner - 617 Mocksville Ave - Salisbury NC - 28144 If I wrote to her I don't remember a response. I think I will scan that Article #4 05 says that a William Agner married Frances Lou Eagle [she was born 1868] Article 346 says Dr. Mashall E. Agner married Mildred Cobb Article 806 says an Agner married into the Rufty family Article 822 is long and about the descendants of John Schuck. He is of German descent, came on the John and William to Pennsylvania in 1732. His wife, Anna Maria and children: George, Christina, Dorthy, Rosina Barbara, and Maria Catharina. It says they don't know what happened to Rosina Barbara and Maria Catharina. Then it says Maria married Henry Eigner. Maria and Henry are ours. AGNER FAMILY 207 This story of the Agner family was told by Dr. by A. Agner, Jr. on July 6,1986 at the fifth annual reunion of the descendants of William Alexander Adolphus Agner and his wife Ellen Virginia Boger Agner. The meeting was held at Union Lutheran Church, Salisbury, North Carolina. >From about the time I was six until I was twelve years old (1930-37)1 spent a week each summer with Grandpa and Grandma Agner where they lived on Dunn's Mountain Road. Those weeks provided me with many new experiences like heIping Grandma to churn butter, going with her to milk the cows, feed the chickens, carrying slop to hogs, carrying milk and butter to the spring house, gathering eggs, drawing water from the well using the old old windlass, helping Grandpa at the blacksmith shop by pumping the bellows at the forge, riding a horse or a mule to and from the fields, plowing, hoeing corn, hoeing cotton, harvesting potatoes and beets, peeling peaches, peeling apples, being around when the wheat threshers came, participating in a corn shucking, helping to pick cotton in the tall, attending a fish fry down in the pasture, going to Sunday School and Church at Union Church, and going with Uncle Glenn to the quarry to wash his Chevrolet roadster (he had a cream colored convertible). I'll always be grate-ful to you aunts and uncles who helped to make those summer visits possible. Little did I realize when visiting the farm that Agners had lived in that area of East Rowan since the mid-seventeen hundreds. Martha, my wife, became interested in family history about 1965. She discovered many interesting facts about the family history which I did not previously know. It came as quite a surprise to find that the will of our immigrant ancestor, written in 1757, was found to be recorded in 1758 in Will Book A of Rowan County. The original will, written in German, was located at the State Archives in Raleigh. Upon receiving a photocopy of the will we took it to Dr. Albright, an archivist at Old Salem, to assist me in deciphering and translating the German script. The will, actually, was a power of attorney to Conrad Michel, who was apparently a friend of our ancestor and was going back to Switzerland. Our ancestor, Johannes Ageder, wanted Mr. Michel to take care of his paternal and maternal inheritance in Switzerland. There is some evidence that the Agners came from the area around Zweisimmen, Boltigen, and St. Stephan in Switzerland in the canton of Bern. Johannes Agender arrived in America on Sep-tember 21,1731, aboard the ship Brifannia sailing from Rotterdam, Holland by way of Cowes, Eng-land. The boat docked at Philadelphia. In process-ing the newly arrived "foreigners," the ship's captain had to render the names of those he had transported. Occasionally, the names of women and children were included in the list and we are fortunate to find that the Agners were one of those families. In addition to the names of Joh-ames Ageder (also entered at times as Eigenter) was that of his wife Margerita (last name spelled Eigenter) and their children: Katherina, age 12; Anna Kreta, age 5; Henriks, age 10; Ludwig, age 3; Magdelena, age 2; and Dorothia, age 6. The signature of Johannes Ageder when he arrived in Philadelphia in 1731 is identical to the signature on his will in Rowan County. The Agners lived on a 300-acre tract of land on the northwestern frontier in what is now Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, for more than fifteen years. We know that Johannes Agner was there because of his sponsoring a baptism in Egypt Reformed Church; because of his name on a land warrant for 300 acres in present-day Lehigh County; because of the listing of his children in Jordan Lutheran Church records in Lehigh County; his advertise-ment in a newspaper to sell his land; and his naturalization as a British citizen in Pennsylvania in 1747. He and at least three of his grown children migrated to Rowan County. Johannes' son Henry bought land from Henry McCulIoh, probably in the mid to late 1740s but due to technicalities the deed was not issued until 1761. We are descended from Johannes through his son Henry and by way of Henry, Jr., Daniel, Isaac, John F (who lost his right arm in the Battle of Wilderness during the Civil War), and William Alexander Adolphus Agner. We know the family names of the wives of most of these ancestors also. In our research I have been fortunate enough to visit the area of Switzerland where our ancestors lived and traveled down the Rhine River as they did when they went to Rotterdam to emigrate. I have seen the location in Rotterdam, Holland, where they boarded the ship for the new world. (Incidentally it is the same area where the pilgrims boarded the Mayflower to sail to Plymouth Rock.) We have traveled to Cowes, England, on the Isle of Wight, where the boat stopped on the way to America; have seen the port of Philadelphia; and we have walked on the property in Lehigh County where Johannes lived for more than fifteen years. And every time I ride down Bringle Ferry Road to High Rock Lake, I ride close by Henry Agner's 1761 property which is situated between Union Church and the creek now known as Church Creek. What caused them to leave that beautifuJ area in Switzerland? We do not know for sure and are still working on that question but would speculate that it had to do with religious persecution and economics. Once situated on the beautiful 300-acre tract of land in Pennsylvania, why did he leave to come to North Carolina? Here we have a little more definite information. A land speculator named Henry McCulloh re-ceived a grant for 1,200,000 acres of land in Piedmont North Carolina providing he would set-tle 6000 foreign Protestants on that land in a ten-year period of time. It was choice land and it was not as threatened by hostile Indians as in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. The word got to Pennsylvania, Germany, and Switzerland of this opportunity and the resulting migration was referred to as the "Carolina Fever." Johannes' son Henry (Henriks) also our ancestor, and with him probably two of his sisters and their husbands, came to Rowan County and settled on McCulloh's tract number nine. Our branch of the Agner family has been associ-ated with Union Lutheran Church since its begin-ning, when it was known as the Dutch Pine Meeting House, which dates to the 1 770s and possibly earlier. Many of the ancestors that have been mentioned are buried in Union Church Cemetery. Sources: In the Edith M. Clark History Room of the Rowan Public Library were the maps of David Rendleman and the following books: Colonial Records of North Carolina, edited by William L. Saunders; Pennsylvania German Pioneers by Ralph Beaver Strassburger; Rowan County North Carolina, Will Abstracts 1753~18O5 by Jo White Linn; and Powan County North Caroliba, Deed Abstracts, l762~l772 by Jo White Linn. Christoph von Bra ifenried's Account of the Founding of New Bern. The public records of Lehigh County, church records, and maps located in Lehigh County Public Library and in the Historical Society Library in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Personal knowledge. -Martha Withers Agner