Our Burget Stories - my Dad's Mom's family

In 1776, three days before the American Colonies declared Independence, Martin and Betsey Bugart baptized their son Emanuel at the German-speaking Himmell Lutheran Church in the Province of Pennsylvania. This is the first evidence for our "Burget" family, so far. The area was defended by Fort Augusta, and at risk from the British and their allies, the Iroquois Confederacy. The 1778 Battle of Wyoming may have led to their seeking the apparently-safer land west of the Alleghenies.

(draft iPhoto Journal page)

By 1790 the Birgits had acquired a plot in the Symmes Purchase, probably after taking a wagon and livestock, along with their supplies along the Forbe's Trail to Fort Pitt, and a flatboat down the Ohio River. They lived in a cabin which was part of the remote Dunlap's Station, housing about a dozen families and a few soldiers. This was following the construction of Fort Washington, not far from an old Hopewell Era earthworks on the Great Miami River. Their farm would have been just outside and the cabin inside this Coleraine Fort. However, it in the disputed Shawnee (British) Northwest Territory near what became Cincinnati. Martin, my 5GGFather, was killed while escaping a small native raid in April, 1792, having survived the brutal, storied Seige of the previous year.

   

Around 1840  the William & Lydia (Keever) Burget family joined the influx of settlers to the recently 'ceded' but not vacated Miami tribes' Seven-Mile Strip. Burget's Corner rose from this swampy, fertile land and became the social and business center of Johnson Township, Clinton County, Indiana.

(J says this jump is jarring; perhaps add graphic.)

Jean, Mary (Curry), Bill Jake & William Burget

More recently, my GGMother Jean Burget married into the prominant Sipe Dog & Pony Shows' family. She was a professional pianist, particularly before the filmed 'talkies,' and was said to have played with Hoagy Carmichael.

Debbie, Ben, Bill, GMa Johnston (child in previous picture) & Dad

Mike, Kaitlyn, Loraine, Bill & Ben

[crop pics, finish editing and add notes/sources]